


Stand Alone and Grow

by SublimeDiscordance



Series: To Find Solace Amidst Desolation [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragons, Canonical Character Death, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Potential Non-Con Trigger (No Actual Non-Con Present), Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-03 23:23:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 62,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1759533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SublimeDiscordance/pseuds/SublimeDiscordance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Raleigh Becket clings to the only thing in his life that still makes any kind of sense, even when it doesn't. Even if, the harder he holds on, the further away his brother seems to drift.</p><p>But then, like it always does, everything changes.</p><p>The absolutely beautiful art is done by <a href="/users/tentacledog">tentacledog</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. first growth

**Author's Note:**

> Holy jeeeeeeeze guys. This ended up way longer than I intended, and for a minibang no less! ~~this was only supposed to be 20k words at most WHAT HAPPENED~~
> 
> Especially HUGE thanks to [tentacledog](/users/tentacledog) for doing the art for this fic, and for putting up with my pestering. The post for the art can be found [here](http://tentacledog.tumblr.com/post/88236091715).
> 
> Shoutout to all my peeps on Tumblr ([Suyari](/users/suyari), [Fadedink](/users/fadedink), [driftingwithchuckhansen](http://driftingwithchuckhansen.tumblr.com), [roguepythia](/users/sharvie), [Ishyko](/users/Ishyko) and many, many more) for your constant support. You guys are the absolute best.
> 
> So, I recently decided to chapter this beast. Because reasons. Fair warining: it's not really regular in terms of chapter length. Largely because I tried to break it up into, well, let's say "epochs" or something like that. 
> 
> Story title comes from the OceanLab song "If I Could Fly"
> 
> Beta Credit: [Airwing](/users/airwing), [Ishyko](/users/Ishyko), [driftingwithchuckhansen](http://driftingwithchuckhansen.tumblr.com), [Suyari](/users/suyari).

Raleigh is five when the dreams begin.

 

_The details are vague, and everything feels warped, bent out of shape in a way that makes it impossible for him to focus on anything for too long without it starting to hurt his ‘eyes’; it’s like looking through the magnifying glass in the mini-science kit his parents got him from too far away, he decides._

_He is flying, though, that much he does know. He can feel air currents rippling over his body as he moves through the wind like a fish through water, twisting one way and then another, a thrill of exhilaration shooting through him as he arcs up. He slows, feels gravity tugging at him until he comes to the top of his motion, weightlessness seizes him, and then he falls._

 

 

He wakes with a delighted cry, jerking upright in his shared bed and rousing Yancy from where his older brother had been sleeping next to him.

“Wha’s wrong, Raleigh?” Yancy asks him groggily, mouth fumbling the sounds so that it comes out over-pronounced, like “Raw-lee,” and opting to just turn his head towards his younger brother rather than his whole body. “Gotta use the bathroom?”

“No!” Raleigh hisses happily, keeping his voice low so as to not wake their parents. “I had a dream!”

Yancy groans, a hand coming up to rest against his forehead and rub at his eyes sleepily.

“That all? Go back to sleep, Rals.”

“But you haven’t asked about my dream,” Raleigh whines perhaps a little too loudly, pouting. “You’re supposed to _ask_ , Yancy!”

The older Becket groans again, rolling back towards his brother, this time rotating his hips and shoulders until he’s on his side, facing the five-year-old. Raleigh makes a happy sound, inwardly delighted that Yancy is paying attention to him and snuggles into the older boy’s arms—not that his brother doesn’t normally pay attention to him, but Raleigh still loves it anyway. “Ask!” he whispers harshly, his smile infecting his tone. He feels Yancy heave out a breath into his hair, the air warm against his scalp, before his brother asks, “What didja dream about, Rals?”

“I was flying,” Raleigh proclaims, tilting his head so he’s looking up at the other boy.

Yancy blinks at him once, slowly, as if making sure he heard correctly, before he sighs sleepily and asks, “And? What happened?”

“That’s all,” the younger Becket proclaims softly, shutting his eyes and nuzzling into his brother’s chest. “It was fun.”

Yancy makes a disgruntled grumbling sound—Raleigh can hear it where his ear is pressed against the older boy’s sternum—but otherwise says nothing. His fingers card through Raleigh’s blond hair—it’s starting to lose the curl that Raleigh has always personally hated—soothing the younger blond until, just as he’s dozing off again, Raleigh hears his brother’s voice.

“Get some sleep, kid. Sweet dreams.”

Raleigh makes an unintelligible sleepy sound—truthfully, he’s not even sure what he was trying to say—and then he’s gone.

 

 

Raleigh is eight when his brother saves him for the first time.

The two Beckets have acquired something of a reputation for being stuck together at the hip in spite of their three-year age gap, whispers following them in the halls that make Raleigh cringe slightly but that his brother resolutely ignores. On this particular day, a group of kids a year older than him have decided that, since he’s always with his older brother, it would make a fun game to try to get Raleigh on his own. So, when Raleigh is on his way back from the bathroom during math and isn’t looking where he’s going, he nearly runs into a boy that’s almost a head taller than him, leering at him in a way that makes the blond instantly uncomfortable.

“Oh, s-sorry,” he stammers, trying to move to the side to get around the other, clearly older, student. The kid just continues to leer at him, gaze flickering to either side of Raleigh. Suddenly, hands grab his arms, and Raleigh is being shoved up against a bank of lockers with a loud clang. He hits his head, and everything abruptly seems to tilt slightly, the world wobbling back and forth.

“Not yet, you aren’t,” the kid says smugly, opening the locker next to where two other boys are holding Raleigh pinned to the bank of metal doors. “Let’s see how long it takes your precious brother to find you.”

Some part of Raleigh’s mind is cognizant enough to realize that he’s about to get shoved into a locker, and, if memory serves, this part of the building doesn’t have any classrooms in it. Therefore, no one is likely to find him unless they need to use the bathroom like he did or they need to get a book they don’t happen to already be carrying. World still off-kilter, he doesn’t offer much more than feeble resistance as the three boys force him, face first, into the metal cage. His nose collides with the back wall and makes a sickening crackling sound that’s drowned out by the sound of the door slamming shut. Pain blossoms in Raleigh’s face, and he cries out, tasting copper. He thinks maybe he says his brother’s name; he’s not sure. He tries to stand up straighter, but hits his head on the metal hooks meant for holding a backpack or coat, crying out once again. The three boys are laughing at him, at his struggles, as he tries to turn around, but the locker is too narrow, and his shoulders don’t quite fit. He starts crying softly, the tears blurring his already-dark vision because his head and face hurt. He can’t get comfortable, and just wants Yancy here; Yancy would make it all better. The boys laugh harder.

“I bet he pees his pants,” one of them says, and Raleigh hears the sound of them high-fiving each other and guffawing loudly.

“Hey, you guys wouldn’t’ve happened to have seen my brother around here, would you?” comes a voice that has Raleigh instantly perking up and trying to call out his brother’s name. However, his jaw muscles and lips are refusing to cooperate, and he just managed to inhale a mouthful of the blood from his nose, and he ends up coughing and spluttering. The other boys have stopped making any noise, the hallway silent except for the sounds Raleigh is making.

“Oh good,” comes Yancy’s voice, closer this time, before there’s a high-pitched cry of pain, then another, and a third, each followed by a series of thuds. “You found him. Stay there for a sec, guys. Gotta make sure he doesn’t get himself into any trouble, y’know?”

The latch on the locker is lifted, and Raleigh feels strong arms encircle his waist as his brother hauls him back out of the small metal box. Raleigh is freely crying now, tears falling down his face and making his nose sting. He feels something warm on his hands where they’re bunched against his chest, and, looking down, he realizes that there are streaks of bright red blood all over his clothes. Mom and Dad are going to be so angry at him. The thought just makes him cry harder. But then his brother is wrapping him in a hug, probably getting Raleigh’s blood all over him, and the younger Becket just falls into the older boy’s embrace.

“Ssh,” he’s saying, running a soothing hand up and down Raleigh’s back, “it’s okay, Rals. I gotcha. C’mon, let’s get you cleaned up.”

They step over the three sprawled forms of the other boys, all apparently out cold, and Raleigh spares the three of their unconscious forms a shocked glance before looking up at his brother, something approaching adoration entering his watery voice as he says, softly, “Dank ‘oo,” nose still completely flooded.

Yancy looks down at him, grinning, something fiercely protective—almost feral—in the expression. Raleigh’s gaze is drawn to his brother’s eyes, and, through his tear-stained vision, he could almost swear that they look… wrong, somehow. Brighter. But then he blinks, tears falling, and is instead met with the same, deep blue-gray he’s always known.

“No problem, lil’ bro. I always got your back.”

By the time they make it to the nurse’s office, Raleigh’s nose has mostly stopped bleeding. After prodding it a few times, she tells them it’s not broken, and she wipes him down with peroxide as she interrogates Yancy.

“Who did this to him?”

“Not sure, actually,” Yancy says. “I just know that they’re older than him,” he gestures towards Raleigh, “and that they won’t be doing it again any time soon.”

The nurse, a tall, willowy woman with jet-black hair and a kind smile, gives Yancy a sideways expression. He simply stares back at her, completely unrepentant.

“Mister Becket, do I need to remind you about the school policy concerning fighting?”

Yancy snickers. “No, Nurse Ratched. I’ll be good, I promise. And don’t worry, they’ll be fine.”

The nurse just rolls her eyes at him. “That’s Nurse Fairweather to you, Mister Becket. Though I do commend your literary prowess at such a young age.”

Raleigh doesn’t understand, exactly, but the sound of Yancy’s laughter is enough for him.

 

 

The school phones Dominique Becket to come and pick up her younger son, and only then does Yancy leave his side to return to class. The other kids trickle in while Raleigh’s waiting, and don’t name Yancy as their attacker; they simply show up at the Nurse’s office for ice packs, their heads hung in shame. They completely ignore the younger Becket, which is perfectly fine with him.

When his mother arrives, she tuts over Raleigh’s bruised face as soon as she catches sight of him, clucking her tongue when she gingerly grips his chin and tilts his head to the side.

“Come, _mon chéri_ ,” she tells him, laying a hand on his cheek lovingly. “Let’s go home, get you all fixed up.” Her tone shifts to something decidedly less warm in an instant. “We will talk about this later.”

 

 

After telling his mother what happened, Raleigh is given a loving hug and several hard candies from a stash his mother keeps somewhere; he’s yet to find it.

Yancy is grounded for three days for fighting in school, even if he didn’t technically get in trouble. He spends the three days sitting with Raleigh on the younger Becket’s bed, reading him _The Hobbit_ until his brother falls asleep. Raleigh wakes up once after Yancy has moved over to his own bed, the clock between them reading one in the morning, and a pang of sadness goes through him at the fact that the two of them now have separate beds. However, he burrows into the sheets that smell like his brother—if only slightly—and drifts off easily enough, the sound of Yancy’s slow, even breathing lulling him to sleep.

 

 

_He’s flying, weaving the air currents that slide over his skin into a tapestry that holds him aloft as he sails into the wind, twisting from side to side. For the first time, though, he is not alone. He is aware of another presence nearby, following him, imitating each sway and swerve. Its presence is benign, friendly even, and he feels almost as if he’s fallen into the middle of a game of tag. Exhilaration burns through his veins, and he banks harshly upward, momentum carrying him up, up, up, to his zenith. Time stands still, weightlessness seizes him, and he falls, screaming joyously._

 

 

Raleigh is twelve when his mother gets sick.

As has become the tradition in the Becket household when the boys get home from school, they’ve both pulled out their homework for the day to get a head start while their mom does something to pass the time. Later, the three of them will go outside, Raleigh and Yancy chasing each other around the yard in their jackets, reenacting some scene from whatever book Raleigh’s brother is reading to him, as Dominique laughs from the porch at their antics. Afterwards, when Richard, their father, gets home, they’ll all sit down and have dinner. They’ll talk, the eldest Becket complaining about a day of hammering out whatever issues might’ve arisen during the construction or maintenance of one of their dams, Raleigh and Yancy talking about school, and then their mom will typically tell some story they’ve _maybe_ heard a thousand times about growing up in France. Raleigh doesn’t mind; he loves his mom’s stories, especially since they all end with his parents meeting.

At the moment, Dominique is putting away clean plates from the dishwasher, stacking each of them on their respective shelf with a muted clatter of dish against dish. Raleigh and Yancy are sitting side-by-side at the kitchen table, facing away from the their mother with their heads bent over their books and papers, the majority of the sounds coming from them consisting of nothing more than pages turning and pencils scratching against paper. Raleigh, for his part, has his math book open to a page filled with graphs, parabolas, and equations as he dutifully solves for X. Yancy, meanwhile, has a science book open—Raleigh seems to recall he said it was chemistry, but he’s not sure because there aren’t any pictures of test tubes or anything—and is scrawling out long series of fractions and letters, the numbers apparently coming from nowhere until he finally ends up with an answer; what magic he has to do to get this answer, Raleigh doesn’t know. Every now and then, the older blond will flip to the back of the book, look at the answer the book claims is correct, and, more often than not, mutter a soft “god fucking damn it...” under his breath, flipping the answer pages shut and going back over his fractions until he figures out what he did wrong. Or, failing that, he’ll just erase the whole thing and start over again.

On the few occasions their mom hears Yancy’s harsh mumblings, she sends a reproving “ _Bébé_ …” over her shoulder, though Raleigh doesn’t need to hear the fond smile in her voice to know that she’s not actually angry. One of Dominique Becket’s favorite sayings, given how much she says it, is that, if you end up swearing, then it just means that you weren’t thinking quickly enough to come up with something better. Because of that, she normally does not tolerate swearing in her presence, least of all from her sons. The only exception is when Yancy is doing his homework. Partially, it’s because she’s usually occupied at the time, but mostly because one time she’d come down on him and Yancy’d asked her for help; she’d accepted the challenge, but then admitted defeat after twenty minutes of staring at the first problem in confusion.

“Only for this, young man, am I understood?” she’d told him, hands on her hips. “I won’t have you using that foulness around me without cause. _Et tu comprends_?”

Presently, Yancy swears—the second time in the past five minutes—and erases the entire problem he’d been working on again, running a hand through his hair. Raleigh feels bad for him, he really does, and the whole experience is really making the younger Becket dread having to take this class when he gets to high school. However, for now, he recites the quadratic formula song his teacher had made them all learn in his head, writing it out and solving for X for his latest problem. As Yancy starts rewriting the problem, Raleigh hears him utter something about “stupid moles” under his breath, and he can’t contain the small chuckle that works its way out of his throat as images of the small, blind creatures mauling his brother invade his mind. The chuckle dies, though, when Raleigh looks to the side and his brother isn’t reacting, is instead still rewriting the problem. What gets to Raleigh is not that he’s being ignored; no, what gets to him—what murders his laughter—is the way Yancy is sucking on his own tongue, the appendage trapped between his pursed lips as he concentrates, the pink tip poking ever so slightly past the border of his mouth. As Raleigh watches, that tongue moves slightly farther out, swipes from left to right, and then disappears back behind the lips that’d previously trapped it.

For some reason, the action lodges something hot—burning—at the back of Raleigh’s throat.

A crash makes them both jump and whirl around, their shoulders pressed together because they’d gone opposite directions. The weight in his throat vanishes, but instead reappears at the point their bodies are pressed together. Raleigh doesn’t have time to ponder this, though, because a much more important sight consumes his attention.

His mother is standing by the edge of the counter, looking just as surprised as Raleigh feels at the chunks of porcelain that now litter the ground at her feet..

“Oh,” she breathes, seemingly to herself, blinking rapidly. “ _Merde_.”

Shock floods Raleigh’s body at his mother’s declaration; Dominique Becket tolerated swearing from herself even less than from her sons, and even less-so from their father: said it was a bad example. However, the initial jolt to his system is relatively small compared to the sharp, cold, _twisting_ sensation in his gut when his mom bends down to pick up one of the larger pieces of the now-ruined plate, and it simply tumbles from her fingers before she gets it more than three inches off the ground. The sound of the dish’s remnant striking the linoleum of the floor again is almost torturously loud in the near-silence that has befallen the kitchen.

The older woman makes a sound that is something of a cross between a surprised gasp and a growl of frustration as she clutches her hands to her chest. They’re visibly shaking.

“ _Merde_ ,” she breathes again, falling to her knees amidst the mess, and, before Raleigh can even blink—can even _think_ —Yancy is out of his chair and kneeling in front of their mom. He takes her hands in his own, thumbs running over their backs in a motion Raleigh recognizes as one his brother has used to calm him in the past, and moves so that he can look her in the eye. Since her head is turned ever so slightly to the side, Raleigh can’t see what information—what truth—Yancy finds in their mother’s gaze, but he knows that his brother must find _something_. Yancy’s grip on their mom’s hands tightens, the flesh around where his fingers grip hers turning white.

“Raleigh,” he murmurs, tone leaving no room for argument despite how soft it was—not that Raleigh usually argues much with what Yancy asks him to do anyway, “get started on cleaning this up while I help mom, okay? Tell dad that we’re upstairs if he gets home before I’m back. Can you do that for me?”

“Okay,” Raleigh answers, realizing that his answer is slightly nonsensical before he reiterates, “okay, yeah. I can do that.”

He moves into the space his mother and brother have now vacated. The younger Becket pointedly does not look up, does not notice the way their mother’s hands are still shaking despite Yancy’s hold on them. Instead, he keeps his eyes trained on the floor as he crouches down and gingerly gathers up the three larger pieces of the plate, trying not to cut himself on the jagged edges, and throws them in the trash can. Given how often his and Yancy’s prank wars or fights ended up with at least one mess _somewhere_ , and that their mom has always made them clean up their own damn messes, he’s become intimately familiar with the house’s cleaning supplies and their locations. As such, he moves immediately to the cupboard and pulls out the broom and dustpan from their hiding place.

He tries not to focus on the fact that he can hear Yancy helping their mother up the stairs, one step at a time.

His brother’s voice reaches his ears, soothing and calming Raleigh the way it always has, even if he can’t understand the soft-spoken words. However, it’s when a tone of worry enters the older Becket brother’s tone that Raleigh comes up short, looking up sharply to see his mom and brother both stopped about two-thirds of the way up the steps. The two of them are conversing rapidly in hushed voices, words too quiet and too far away to be understood, the tension in Yancy’s shoulders ratcheting up significantly the longer they talk.

“Everything okay?” he calls out to them. Yancy glances back at him, and for a split-second Raleigh could swear that his brother’s eyes are a brighter blue than normal: almost glowing. However, when he blinks, they’re back to their normal, stormy-gray-blue, and he shakes his head lightly. Must’ve been a trick of the light or something, the youngest Becket reasons, or, more likely, the over-active imagination their father has always been telling him he has. A memory from years past nags at him, tries to surface, but doesn’t quite make it.

“Yeah, Rals,” Yancy says over his shoulder. “I’ll be down in a minute to help you finish up, okay kid?”

The words do nothing to assuage the small kernel of worry that is curling in Raleigh’s gut, but he nods anyway.

 

 

The next day, their mother seems to be fine. She doesn’t drop anything, doesn’t shake, and still carries herself with the same good cheer she normally does. She helps Raleigh with his English homework, reading his five hundred and three words over for grammatical errors and clarity, and bakes cookies for them when Yancy switches from math to trying his hand at a new chemistry assignment. She laughs, she smiles; everything seems normal.

Later, Raleigh and Yancy are curled up on the couch together, the older reading _The Fall of Hyperion_ aloud to his brother. Raleigh allows himself to drift into a kind of daze with Yancy’s voice lilting above him and his older brother’s heart beating laconically beneath his ear.

The calm is broken by the sound of something heavy falling followed by what sounds like a shout. A shout that sounds distinctly like their mother. Raleigh is completely awake in an instant, sitting up straight; it was a good thing, too, he thought, since Yancy immediately jumps up from where he’d been lying. Raleigh’s pretty sure his brother would’ve just shoved him off if he had still been in his lap. Yancy darts up the stairs, shouting a loud, worried, “Mom?” as he goes. Raleigh wants to go up and check on her—really, he does—but something keeps him rooted to the spot, makes his fingers bunch into fists in the material of his jeans and his whole body shake; perhaps, he thinks to himself, it’s fear.

Upstairs, he can hear his father asking what’s going on from his place in his at-home office, followed by the sounds of Yancy’s shouted reply.

Raleigh pulls his knees to his chest and wraps his arms around them, trying to fall into the residual warmth his brother’s body had left behind.

 

 

The doctors say nothing’s wrong with her after they rush to the emergency room. They run a battery of tests, use all sorts of fancy medical terminology like “Hsp70” and “cortisol”—though Raleigh _does_ know what they mean when they say that his mom is running a slight fever, thank you very much—but the net of it is that nothing _seems_ out of place. Even so, they send the Beckets home with several prescriptions and orders for Dominique to get plenty of rest. Richard thanks the men in lab coats profusely.

 

 

“Raleigh, _mon chéri_ , can you go up to your room for a little bit?” his mother asks him when they get home. Raleigh looks up at her, confused, wondering what the source of the strange order could be, but nods his head anyway, letting out a soft, “Yeah, mom. Sure.”

The entire way up the stairs, the house is completely silent. Dread fills Raleigh’s stomach as he makes it to the last step, pausing, wondering what the three of them could possibly need to talk about that he can’t know.

“Please, Raleigh,” comes the soft, knowing, _tired_ voice of his mother from the living room. “It’s nothing bad, sweetheart, and you’re not in trouble, I promise. We just need to talk to Yancy about something.”

The words do nothing to assuage the feeling in his gut that something is _wrong_ , but Raleigh climbs the last step anyway. The sound of his door latching itself closed is loud amidst the quiet, nearly making him jump. Instead, Raleigh wanders over to his side of the room, grabs his iPod, headphones, and his spine-creased copy of _I, Robot_ , plugging his music in and settling down to read.

It’s not as nice as when Yancy does it.

 

 

 _He’s flying, soaring high above the ground, weaving between the clouds as currents of air run over, around,_ through _his body. There is something following him, but he is not afraid. He swerves to the left, hiding himself in a bank of clouds, the other presence rocketing past. He pours on speed, playfulness building in his gut as his partner in this aerial game of tag seems to realize their blunder and loops around to speed straight towards him. Without looking back at the other, he banks harshly, weaving the air about him until he’s flying straight upward, gravity pulling at his bones, slowing him down until, finally, he reaches the apex of his arc. Weightlessness takes over, and he plunges downward, crying out in challenge._

_A harsh, inhuman cry greets his ears in answer._

 

 

Raleigh wakes with a gasp, the memory of that sound still ringing in his mind. His book is still propped open on his chest, his iPod still whispering music into his ears. His ears ache slightly from being stretched by the earbuds for so long, and he reaches up, limbs still heavy and slow from sleep, and tugs at them, popping the small speakers out of his ears.

Something rustles in the darkness.

He sits bolt upright, book sliding from his stomach and falling shut on the comforter he’d neglected to get under before it slides further, off the bed and onto the carpeted floor. Panic, irrational and sudden, floods Raleigh’s veins, constricting his chest and spawning a rushing sound in his ears as his heart beats an almost painful rhythm against the inside of his ribcage. He looks around in a way that less generous individuals would call frantic before a voice drifts out of the dark, soft and unsure.

“Rals?”

The effect is immediate. The pounding of his heart ceases, returning to its slow, tired pace within the span of one of his shaky exhales, and his ability to breathe properly returns. His muscles, which had tensed up, relax, and he almost sags with relief.

“God, Yance, you _scared_ me,” Raleigh murmurs, head drooping.

There’s more rustling—and, this time, Raleigh can tell that it’s coming from Yancy’s side of the room—before the lamp on the table at the head of his brother’s bed flares to life. The blue and white lampshade throws beams of colored light through the room, illuminating his brother’s outline where the teen is standing between Raleigh and the light. Despite the way the fluorescent bulb only comes to life at half its actual brightness, the younger Becket still has to interdict one of his hands between the light and his eyes for a few moments as they adjust.

“Thought you were asleep, kid,” says the Yancy-shaped shadow, tone apologetic.

A sleepy sound crawls from Raleigh’s throat at the words.

“Mmn, I was, I think,” he answers, the palm shielding his eyes now rubbing at them. “I had that dream again.”

Behind his palm, Raleigh hears the rustling begin again.

“The flying one?” Yancy asks, voice sounding simultaneously distracted and interested.

“Yeah,” Raleigh mumbles, both hands now wiping the sleep from his eyes before they drop back to his lap. “It was weird, though, this time—wait, what are you doing?”

The rustling that woke Raleigh, apparently, had resulted from the fact that Yancy is currently piling all his clothes onto his bed and shoving them in bags, while the majority of his possessions are now in plastic boxes and crates. Yancy turns around, follows the direction of Raleigh’s gaze, and shrugs, not looking his brother in the eye.

“I just think it’s time I moved into my own room. I mean, I’m gonna be sixteen in a month—” _a month and twelve days_ , Raleigh’s mind helpfully informs him, “—and I sorta feel like I need my own space, now, y’know? ‘Sides, I don’t want you feeling like I’m stifling you or anything. You’re at the age where you should have a space that’s yours, Rals.”

“You didn’t want one when you were my age,” Raleigh accuses softly, trying to mask the dull throb of hurt that’s pulsing under his skin. The words make Yancy stiffen for a moment before he, too, slumps slightly, turning and looking Raleigh in the eye.

“I couldn’t very well leave my baby brother all on his own, though, now could I?” he asks, striding over and squatting down slightly so that he’s at eye level with the younger Becket. “What kind of older brother would that make me?”

When he reaches out a hand to place it gently on the younger blond’s shoulder, though, Raleigh shrugs it off and dives forward, wrapping his arms around his brother’s neck. He feels Yancy stumble for a split second before he regains his balance, but Raleigh is more focused on the way his brother’s cotton-clad chest feels against his forehead.

“Please don’t go,” he whispers, words almost inaudible.

Yancy seems to be at a loss, both his arms raised until he eventually lowers them, one landing on Raleigh’s back to return the hug while the other lands on his head, both moving in lazy circles.

“It’s for the best, kid.”

When Yancy pulls back, Raleigh nearly pitches forward off the bed, only managing to right himself by grabbing at the bedside table. The corner bites into his palm, drawing a thin line of red across his heartline. He holds back the hiss of pain, but Yancy is still at his side again in an instant, grabbing Raleigh’s palm and opening it face-up to reveal the shallow cut. He lets out a sigh, shaking his head.

“Oh Rals,” he murmurs, smile bittersweet, “what am I gonna do with you, kiddo?”

Later, hand throbbing from where Yancy had disinfected the scrape as tenderly as he could, Raleigh lies under the sheets, alone in the room— _his_ room, now. He rolls onto his side, facing the wall, as if not looking at the empty bed behind him will magically erase the fact that it’s unoccupied. As if, if he tries hard enough, he can imagine that Yancy is still there: his breathing, his soft snores; the warmth that he brings to a room by simply existing in it.

Raleigh shivers. He pulls the comforter higher up around his shoulders and shuts his eyes as tightly as he can.

It doesn’t help.

 

 

Three weeks later, Raleigh asks Yancy to read to him. They haven’t finished _The Fall of Hyperion_ yet, and Raleigh wants to know how the Outsters are managing what the characters have repeatedly deemed is impossible.

“No, kid. Not this time.”

“But, why not?” Raleigh asks, clutching at the book. He knows it’s childish and petty, but, really, Yancy’s the one who got him into sci-fi in the first place when he read _I, Robot_ to him at the tender age of seven. And, before that, he’d read a veritable mishmash of things to his younger brother. To Raleigh, books just sound better in his brother’s voice.

This time, though, Yancy does the last thing Raleigh expects.

“Because the entire fucking world doesn’t revolve around you, Raleigh! Okay?” the older boy shouts, words echoing throughout the kitchen. “Maybe I don’t really _want_ to read to you. Did you ever bother to, just _maybe_ , think about _that_?”

The older boy lets out an angry huff of air and pushes himself back from the table, chair scraping the linoleum, note cards and French book left scattered on the table. Yancy ignores their mother’s calls and reprimands, instead storming up the stairs and into his room, slamming the door behind him. Raleigh just stares after his brother as tears well up in his eyes. His mother is saying something, has a hand on his cheek and is trying to get him to look at her. Raleigh allows his head to be moved, but he doesn’t _see_ anything. All he can see is Yancy’s face, twisted up in anger. At him. The image is seared into his retinas.

Raleigh’s not sure if the tears in his eyes ever actually fall or not. There are too many emotions swirling around his head, and everything seems out of focus, distorted; wrong.

Even later that night, when Yancy knocks and then enters his room to apologize, Raleigh is still sniffling under the covers, still feels lost. Displaced. Like there’s a chasm between them. Like he’s standing on the wrong side of a calving iceberg, plunging down to be swallowed up by the freezing ocean.

Like maybe Yancy doesn’t love him anymore.

 

 

_He is flying into the wind, riding the eddies and ripples in the currents. The sky stretches above him like some great, infinite dome, dazzling in its brightness, while beneath him stretches endless forest. He weaves through the clouds, the icy barrier between the two realms, up, down, over, under, through—it doesn’t matter. Here, he is supreme. This is his domain. This is his sky._

_He becomes aware of the other’s presence, always behind him, always just out of sight, always chasing him in an endless game of tag. He hears the other sweep above him, feels the change in wind currents from their flight; knows the exact moment they pounce. He banks hard to the left, barking out a laugh as the other dives past him, and then ascends through a dark thunderhead, lightning flashing around him as he flies up, up, up, until at last he’s above the tumult. The other is pursuing now, having reversed their direction, shooting upwards at him like a bullet. Raleigh tucks his invisible limbs, letting his momentum carry him higher, higher, until at last he stands still—time itself stands still—and then he’s falling._

_He sees a blur of blue and gray streak past him, and then the storm surrounds him once more._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief apology to anyone reading the comments on this chapter, as this was originally the...only chapter. A 62k chapter. So. Any comments on this chapter from before ~Jan 1 2016 are comments on the whole story.


	2. growing pains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: This chapter contains a potential non-con trigger. It's near the end and begins with the words, "On a normal evening, Yancy is home around ten fifty." and ends with the chapter. If you want to skip to the end to read a summary of what happened at that point, feel free.

It’s said that distance makes the heart grow fonder.

When he was younger, Raleigh never believed in such an idea, thinking that it was just one of those weird things older people said.

That, though, was before he realizes that he’s in love with his older brother.

 

 

The revelation is a long time in coming. Nothing specific sets it off, nor does it come as a grand sort of epiphany with an angelic chorus from above or a shout of “Eureka!” Instead, it starts as a low, dull ache, the space between himself and Yancy taking on a very specific shape over the next two years. They still do their homework together at the table. They still read together, although Yancy will now, more often than not, read materials for school while Raleigh peruses whatever book has caught his attention at the moment. Even so, Raleigh will still ask Yancy to read aloud to him, and, occasionally, the older Becket will relent. Which is how Raleigh comes to be familiar with tales such as _One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest_ , _1984_ , _Dracula_ , _The Great Gatsby_ , and others that Raleigh is sure he’s going to encounter later in his high school career. Some of the books— _1984_ , as an example—he’s already read, but he listens anyway, curled up beside his brother and listening to the rises and falls of the older teen’s voice.

Even this close, Raleigh feels like they’re standing on the peaks of opposite mountains, shouting across the valley. The semblance of old habits helps to mitigate the dull throb that always seems to be at the back of his mind, but the differences make that valley feel wider than ever. Yancy no longer allows Raleigh to curl up in his lap the way he used to. The last time he’d tried, Yancy had stopped reading and gone to his room, locking the door behind him, so Raleigh contents himself with leaning against the other blond’s shoulder. If he happens to fall asleep on his brother’s shoulder, he no longer wakes in his bed, instead swimming to consciousness still leaning on the couch with his brother nowhere in sight and a cramp working itself up his stiffening neck.

His room still feels wrong, even after two years. Every time he lays down, he has to first remind himself that his brother is down the hall, the other teen sleeping soundly in his own room, before he can, himself, fall sleep, his mind still expecting his brother to wander in and collapse face-first on the spare bed on the opposite side of the room the way he always used to.

As time drags on, the ache in his chest from Yancy’s absence grows larger, planting itself like a seed in his heart, sending tendrils throughout his body that will flash with pain if they come in contact with his brother for too long. Raleigh tries to ignore it, tries to push it back, harden it within a shell and keep it contained. But, the more he’s around Yancy, the worse it hurts, and the more distance between them, the more it spreads. The younger Becket wants to scream in frustration because a small part of his mind knows what this is, knows exactly what’s happening, knows that it’s considered wrong, and will happily tell him so whenever his thoughts become too quiet for too long.

 

 

It happens on a Wednesday.

The two of them are heading downstairs after putting their mother to bed. She’s been having difficulty moving on her own, so it falls to the two of them to take care of her while their father is away, helping with maintenance on some dam somewhere in the continental U.S. The doctors still say nothing is wrong with her.

Yancy’s hand accidentally brushes against the back of Raleigh’s fingers. Raleigh catches the quick motion his brother’s head makes in his direction out of the corner of his eye, and Yancy mumbles a soft, “Sorry, kid. My bad,” as he moves a half-step further from his brother’s side. The words, “It’s okay,” even though it’s not, are on Raleigh’s tongue, desperate to leap forward, because, really, this is what he _needs_ to say; eventually, it’s possible that he’ll start believing it himself.

Instead, his mouth opens, and something else entirely spills out.

“I think I’m in love with you.”

Time seems to stand still as what he’d just said sinks into Raleigh’s mind. He fumbles, entire body jerking in surprise, and he misses the next step entirely. His body starts to pitch forward, and he flails his arms as he tries to grab onto something, anything, to keep himself from falling. There is a singular, terrifying moment where the floor is rushing up to meet him, where he tries to bring his arms in front of his face to shield his head but they’re moving too slowly.

But then his fall is arrested, his brother pressed up against his side and arms wrapped around his waist, as if Raleigh had been some kind of goddamn damsel in distress. Raleigh call feel the full length of Yancy’s body flush against him, can feel the hard muscle hidden by the baggy t-shirt, can feel the _heat_ his brother’s body gives off, like a furnace. For a split second, a thrill of arousal tears through his body, filling in the aching gaps until Raleigh is left with a single, disbelieving thought. He turns his face towards Yancy’s, everything seeming to be moving in slow motion, and asks, softly, _hopefully_ , “Yance…?”

But then Yancy is gone, pulling away from Raleigh and leaving him feeling cold and desolate, the ache returning strongly enough that Raleigh gasps and clutches reflexively at his chest.

“I’m sorry, kid,” Yancy says softly, striding into the living room without looking back, tone betraying nothing and shoulders tensed. No “I know kiddo, I love you too,” followed by, “No, as in _I’m in love with you_.” No “But we’re brothers.” No “That’s disgusting, Rals.” Nothing but “I’m sorry.”

As Yancy walks away, Raleigh hears the words his older brother whispers, just barely loud enough that he can hear them.

“I can’t.”

 

 

It’s only later that evening, after he’s been lying in bed long enough that the sobs he’d held inside all day had torn themselves from his chest as he’d screamed into his pillow, that he realizes Yancy had never actually told him no. And that, the _hope_ , is enough to rip a fresh wave of shudders from within him.

 

 

“Is everything alright between you and your brother?”

Raleigh pauses from where he’d been making breakfast, something he’d taken it upon himself to do every Saturday morning after his mom got sick. Bacon sizzles in one pan as he mixes up pancake batter in a bowl. Light streams through the window that looks out upon the front yard and their seemingly infinite driveway that stretches to the road somewhere in the distance, trees and jagged mountains surrounding them on all sides. His mother is sitting at the table, reading the front page, which he knows will be followed by the comics as soon as she’s satisfied that the world is still falling apart around their ears. It’s been a good day for her so far, and she’d managed to make it down the stairs and to the kitchen without his help.

It’s been three days since he’d confessed his feelings to his brother. Three days which have served to prove to Raleigh that, yes, he’s in love with his brother, and, yes, love fucking _hurts_. Yancy completely avoids him now. If Raleigh enters a room, the older Becket might stay for a few minutes, maybe five at most, before he makes some excuse to leave. The entire time, he won’t look in Raleigh’s direction, will instead look around him, even if Raleigh happens to accidentally end up right in front of him. Raleigh’s taken to curling up on the couch in their old spot, _I, Robot_ clutched to his chest as he tries to will himself to open the book.

He blinks, clearing the memories from his eyes, and resumes mixing.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” he answers, pointedly not looking her in the eye. His mother’s always had this _way_ of knowing when either he or Yancy were lying. “Great, actually.”

“Raleigh…” and oh. Oh shit. His mom’s voice is entirely too knowing. Raleigh sets down his bowl of mix and turns the heat off the bacon before moving the pan onto a different burner. If he knows that tone, this is likely going to be a long talk, and she’s not going to let it go until she has an answer that satisfies her. When he finally works up the courage to turn around, his mom is looking at him dead on, paper folded in front of her, gaze boring through him and his admittedly pitiful attempts at keeping the truth from her.

His arms cross defensively over his chest almost of their own accord, and Raleigh lets out a huff, blinking slowly, trying to marshal his thoughts and feelings.

“I mean it, Mom. We’re good. Seriously.”

His mother just stares at him, then extends a hand on top of the paper, fingertips curled towards the black and white print, before she taps the table twice with her pointer finger. It’s a little signal she’s always used to let the brothers know she’s quickly losing patience with them. And, Raleigh knows from experience, Dominique Becket’s temper is nothing to scoff at.

He hurries to take a seat across the table from her, folding his hands in his lap until she clears her throat and he puts them on the table in front of him. The grain in the worn wood is suddenly the most interesting thing Raleigh has ever seen.

“I talked to Yancy about this last night,” she finally says after Raleigh’s counted sixteen beats of his heart as it thuds in his ears. He looks up, then, alarmed, mouth dropping open, about to make a denial, that, no, Yancy’d misunderstood what he meant, because, if there was anything that was constant in the Becket household, it was that Yancy did whatever their mother asked. Dominique must catch sight of his expression, because she suddenly grins triumphantly.

“He wouldn’t tell me anything. At least, not directly. But thank you for confirming that there is something, _mon chéri_. It is always good to know that a mother knows her sons, even if they think they are being mysterious with their teenager-y ways.” The grin his mother is wearing is wide enough to split her face, and Raleigh is suddenly overcome with the thought that his mother is _beautiful_. It’s suddenly clear to him that Yancy got most of his looks from her, because they both have the same kind of precise, sturdy beauty about them.

“Though, still, I must ask, _mon chéri_ : what is it that’s going on between you and Yancy? Did you two get in a fight?”

Raleigh shakes his head immediately in denial, still not looking up for more than a split second. “No, nothing like that, we just…” he trails off, trying to think of a way to put this that won’t make it sound too much like exactly what it is. In the end, he can’t think of anything, so he just shrugs. “We’re just… not really talking at the moment. I don’t know really what to tell you... I’m sorry.”

“Mm-hmm,” she nods at him slowly, eyebrow raised. “Well then, perhaps you two should try to make up? I know Yancy is not happy with the distance between the two of you.”

The words make something flare to life in Raleigh, and has to resist the urge to jump out of his chair. He settles for curling his hands into fists, fingernails biting into his palms.

“ _He’s_ not happy with it?” Raleigh practically hisses. “Well that’s too bad for him. He’s the one who won’t stay in the same room as me ever since I told him—”

Teeth snap shut on the words he’d been about to say, and Raleigh’s anger vanishes abruptly; his mother has a smirk on her face, a perfect match to the one Yancy always used to wear. Oh yeah, he definitely got more from her than Raleigh did.

“As I thought,” she says smugly. “What did you tell your brother, then?”

Raleigh stays resolutely silent.

“ _Chéri_ …” Dominique presses gently, letting the word hang in the air between them. Raleigh looks down at the table again, keeping his lips pressed firmly together. When, after almost a minute of silence, he still hasn’t said anything, he watches in his peripheral vision as his mother’s smirk drops to be replaced with a worried expression.

“Whatever it is, Raleigh, it cannot be as bad as you are thinking. And I know for a fact that nothing would ever make your brother stop loving you. I do not think either of you could stop loving each other even if you wanted to.”

Raleigh feels a rush of something so hot it feels like ice go through him at the words, his entire body tensing. _There’s no way she could’ve guessed_ , he tries to reassure himself. _No fucking way_. There is a sigh from the other side of the table. The sound of her chair scraping makes Raleigh look up once more to see his mom pushing herself to her feet before moving slowly, deliberately, over towards him. When she makes it around the table and reaches towards him, she rests a palm on top of his head, ruffling his hair lightly as she gently pushes at him until he’s looking up at her.

“You must understand, _mon chéri_ ,” she whispers, the nickname falling easily from her lips, though, this time, there is an added layer of meaning to it that makes Raleigh suddenly feel like there is so much more going on than he realizes, as if his mother is trying desperately to tell him something, but he’s missing some crucial piece necessary to see it, “I know that you two are closer than most brothers, but that is not _wrong_. That you have such a close relationship with Yancy is beautiful. It is to be envied. If you feel that it is too much, I understand, but please, do not throw such a thing away so lightly. I know Yancy does not want that. And neither should you.”

There’s a pause during which her features become almost imploring. Raleigh desperately wants to know what it is his mother thinks he knows.

“Please, Raleigh. It pains me to see you both like this. No matter what this is, I know you can both beat it. Together.”

 

 

_Everything is chaos._

_Lightning crackles around him as he flies through the storm, thunder echoing behind it almost immediately as the bolts of plasma rend the air around him. Rain pelts at his eyes, and the wind buffets him roughly, trying to pull him towards the ground, but he just shakes his head and lets out a joyous shout, pushing himself harder, faster, dodging bolts of immeasurable heat as he tries to evade the other presence with whom he shares his sky. A fork of lightning lances the air almost immediately to his right, the smell of ozone filling his nostrils as his skin tingles and he is flung to the side as the air literally explodes in the bolt’s wake. However, he gives a whoop, unharmed—it will take much more than a simple storm to kill him—and uses the force of the blast to accelerate himself faster._

_Behind him, he hears the familiar screech of the other presence, and he banks into a particularly dense area of clouds, hoping to evade them. However, the other makes a strange sort of chuffing sound—something tells him that it’s laughter—and follows immediately, not fooled. Raleigh pushes himself, his limbs feeling like they’re going to be torn off from strain as he pulls his path into a hairpin turn, g-forces slamming his body. He rockets past the other presence, which this time is a dark gray blur without the blue, matching the clouds that surround them, before he tucks his tired limbs about him and drops like a stone, a cry of exultation working itself from between his lips as he races the raindrops to the ground._

 

 

Three months pass. Nothing changes. To Raleigh, this is both a good and bad thing, since it means that, while he and Yancy don’t make much—if any—progress towards repairing their relationship, neither do they slip any further apart. The school year ends, summer begins, and the two of them spend the summer mostly lazing about, reading, playing video games, and watching the forests come to life around their house as the days wear on longer and longer. It’s Raleigh’s last summer before he has to begin high school, and Yancy has submitted all his college applications and is waiting to hear back sometime in early August.

“August first,” he tells Raleigh. “I just gotta wait until then. And then I’ll know.”

 

 

August first comes. August first goes. No letters arrive for Yancy.

He tries to hide his disappointment, but Raleigh can still see it in the way his brother’s eyes have lost some of their shine. When, by the evening of the third, there are still no letters—acceptance, rejection, or otherwise—Yancy comes into Raleigh’s room for the first time since Raleigh’s admission and just lays down on the younger Becket’s bed. He presses his back against his brother’s leg where Raleigh is propped up against the headboard, _Forward The Foundation_ open in his lap, his iPod filling his ears with music through his earbuds, and a bag of Jolly Ranchers half-eaten on his bedside table. Raleigh freezes when he feels the bed dip, almost inhaling the blue raspberry hard candy he’s currently sucking on when Yancy’s clothes make contact with his shorts-clad leg. He removes a single earbud, looking at his brother with some confusion. It’s not that he’s unhappy Yancy is in his room; it’s just, well, he doesn’t know what it means, exactly.

“Yance?”

“No one wants me, Rals,” Yancy mutters. His brother’s voice sounds strange—like he’s speaking from far away, almost hollow, and Raleigh can’t quite place how that voice makes him feel.

“Well, _I_ want you, Yance,” he says softly, placing a hand on his brother’s shoulder where it’s hovering by his hip and rubbing gently.

He realizes less than a second after the words are out of his mouth that it was the wrong thing to say. Yancy tenses up, shoulders bunching together as he curls slightly in on himself, moving his body incrementally further away from his younger brother.

“That’s not what I mean, Yance, and you know it,” he hastily adds. “I mean, yeah, okay, that’s true, too, but, I mean, I want you to be around, man. Like,” he lets his book fall from his hand, rubbing nervously at the back of his neck even though he knows Yancy can’t see it, “I dunno, I just, things seem better when you’re around, y’know? Even if you’re not really,” talking to me, “doing much, just, you being here… I dunno. It makes it better, I guess.”

Yancy makes a huffing sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh and turns over until he’s on his back. It’s then that Raleigh catches sight of the tear tracks running down his brother’s face, numerous enough to suggest that he’d been crying for a good while before he’d come to the younger blond.

“Real convincing, Rals,” he says with a wry look. The words are slightly watery, and Raleigh wonders just how much Yancy’d been forcing himself to sound normal—to sound unaffected.

It’s Raleigh’s turn to huff.

“I mean it, though, Yance. I think about you going off to college, and I… I don’t know what I’m going to do, actually. It’s bad enough,” when you ignore me, “the way things are now, and I just… I’m gonna miss you. I’ll be upset when you’re gone.”

The direct look Yancy sends his way tells Raleigh that the older teen knows exactly what he’s not saying, and there’s a flicker of something within those stormy-ocean eyes that looks like it might almost be regret. His older brother holds his gaze for a few moments, then looks down.

“Yeah, I… I know, Rals. And, I…” he closes his eyes, taking a breath, “I’m sorry for the way I’ve been treating you. I just, I freaked, okay?”

When Yancy’s eyes find his again, Raleigh can’t help the soft, sharp gasp that’s pulled in through his teeth at the _pain_ he sees there.

Yancy is hurting.

The thought crosses Raleigh’s mind that maybe, just maybe, these last few years—especially the last few months—haven’t been any easier on his brother than they have on him.

“Yance, I—” he starts, but his brother cuts him off.

“I know, Rals, I do, okay: I know how you feel, and I’m sorry, but I… I shouldn’t be that for you. I… I just _can’t_ , okay? Even if…” Yancy’s eyes flicker down for the briefest of moments, and Raleigh feels a surge of something race through him that he hasn’t felt in far too long: hope. Yancy swallows, and Raleigh is hard-pressed to not track the motion of his throat as he does.

“But,” his brother continues, “when I tried to stop it from happening, I stopped being your brother, too. And that’s—I shouldn’t’ve let that happen, Rals. I’m sorry. If I made you feel unwanted—” _ah, that’s it, then_ , the younger Becket finds himself thinking, “—then I’m sorry, Rals. I’m just… I’m sorry. I… I want to try again. To get it right. To not fuck it up. Can we do that?”

Raleigh’s mouth snaps shut in surprise, crushing the remnants of his jolly rancher. He has to be dreaming. There’s no way this is real.

“…What? Is this… are you for real, Yance?”

An expression crosses Yancy’s face, sad and disappointed— _defeat_ , Raleigh thinks—and he looks away, wiping at his eyes as he turns over again and makes to stand.

“Yeah, you—you’re right, sorry kid, I wasn’t thinking. I dunno why I thought you’d want—”

Almost on reflex, Raleigh reaches out and grabs hold of his brother’s arm.

“ _No_ , Yancy, I—shit, I mean _yes_ , Yance. Damn it, you can’t just spring something on me like that an expect me to just… _answer_. I… it’s a lot to take in, okay?” Raleigh tries to make his voice sound reassuring, tamping down on the rage he wants to vent, the months— _years_ —of pain Yancy’s decision to avoid him have caused. He wants his brother to _know_ —wants him to _feel_ —the same pain he’s been feeling, wants to shove it into the older Becket’s face, to relish in this moment. But he doesn’t. Oh, sure, the urge is there, but he can see that Yancy’s been hurting, too. And the urge to comfort his brother, to keep Yancy happy, to simply see him _smile_ again, far outweighs any petty thoughts of vengeance.

“I,” Raleigh clears his throat, staring hard at the back of Yancy’s head, “I want to try, too. I miss you, Yance. I’ve _missed_ you. If you’re willing to try, then… Yeah. I’d like that.”

Raleigh’s expecting Yancy to turn around. He’s expecting his brother to look up at him, clearly miserable but with a glimmer of hope that mirror’s Raleigh’s own. What he’s not expecting is the way Yancy’s body slams into him, arms wrapping around his neck as his brother nearly strangles him with a hug. Faintly, he’s aware of words being whispered into the collar of his shirt.

“Thank you, Rals. Thank you. God, I’m so sorry, lil’ bro…”

Raleigh unfreezes to fold his own arms around his brother’s midsection, leaning his head forward until his nose makes contact with the point where Yancy’s shoulder meets his neck. His brother’s skin is warm to the touch, and Raleigh spares a thought wondering if perhaps Yancy had worried about this to the point of making himself sick, then chuckles internally at the thought because his brother has _never_ been sick as long as Raleigh’s known him.

“Yancy, shut up, it’s okay,” he whispers with a laugh. “I forgive you, you dork. It’s not like you’ve been a big brother before. It’s hard. It’s complicated. I get it.”

Yancy laughs against Raleigh’s neck before he pulls back, hands still resting on either side of his younger brother’s shoulders as he smiles shyly. Raleigh has to resist the urge to shiver at the residual feeling of the older blond’s hot breath ghosting over his skin.

“You have no idea, bro. None at all.”

 

 

They talk for hours, sitting together atop the comforter, Raleigh scooting over until his side is touching the wall as Yancy clambers back onto the bed. At one point, Yancy notices the battered copy of _I, Robot_ lying, fallen, beside Raleigh’s legs. His eye widen, and he reaches over Raleigh’s thighs to snatch it up.

“I can’t believe you still have this thing, Rals,” he whispers. “God, it’s been, what, six years since I first read this to you?”

Raleigh laughs, prying the dog-eared book from his brother’s grasp. “seven, actually, but yeah. I still read it when I’m feeling down, y’know? I guess it reminds me of, well, when we were kids.”

Yancy’s gaze lands significantly on the book, eyes darting back and forth, and Raleigh can almost hear him cataloging in his head how obvious it is that the younger Becket has read the book easily dozens of times.

“I’m almost done with it,” he adds quickly, hoping to distract his brother. “Calvin and Byerley just figured out the bit with the modified First Law, so,” he shrugs his shoulders, “if you wanted to, you could read it to me? For old time’s sake? Or, maybe,” here, Raleigh shrugs again, “we could read something else?”

Yancy continues staring at the old book for a moment before he shakes himself, turning towards the younger blond.

“Uh, yeah, yeah, sure, I can do that. Gimme a sec. Dad just got me this new series. I think you’ll really like it.”

When the older Becket returns a moment later, brandishing a glossy, new paperback he’s smiling widely. Raleigh catches a glimpse of the front cover: _Gateway_ , it reads in flowing letters.

“Budge over, kiddo,” Yancy commands, wrapping an arm around Raleigh’s neck once he’s situated and pulling his younger brother’s head under his arm; Raleigh’s cheek ends up almost in Yancy’s lap. He just smiles at his brother’s familiar antics, settling into Yancy’s side, and allowing the older blond’s voice to flow over him as he closes his eyes, images of a far-off world playing behind his eyelids.

 

 

Raleigh wakes up the next morning to find that they’re still curled up like that, his head on Yancy’s chest, _Gateway_ propped open on the older Becket’s stomach, an arm still wrapped protectively around Raleigh’s shoulders. He takes a moment to revel in the sensation of waking in his brother’s embrace before the warmth of the body underneath him and the steady, gentle heartbeat thrumming into his ear have him drifting off to sleep once more.

 

 

As with all good things in Raleigh’s life, it can’t last. At the very least, it can’t stay the same.

Three days later, Yancy receives mail from two colleges. Acceptance letters from each.

They’re both on the East Coast.

Yancy claims that if these two are late, it’s possible that some of the others—specifically, the ones in Alaska and California—are running late as well. Raleigh tries to be happy for his brother, he really does. He gives him a high five that Yancy grabs and uses to pull him into a hug, and he just goes along with his brother’s giddiness. Inside, though, he’s already started counting down the days until Yancy starts college. Just over three hundred and eighty and counting.

He isn’t afraid of admitting to himself that he’s terrified.

Yancy, of course, notices his stiff shoulders and equally stiff smiles, and repeatedly asks him with a far too knowing look if everything is okay. Raleigh, like he has for the past two years, just nods and plasters the smile even wider onto his face, saying, yes, of course, why would anything be wrong? Yancy is chasing his dream, and that’s amazing. Raleigh is so proud of him. And that’s all true.

There’s just one problem.

Whenever Yancy leaves, Raleigh’s dreams will leave with him.

Of course, he can’t say that. He won’t let himself. He refuses to ruin this moment for Yancy. After all, he still has the image seared into his brain of his brother’s tear-streaked face as he mutters brokenly, “No one wants me.” So he stays silent. Holds his tongue. Fakes it until he makes it, he supposes. Maybe, one day, he’ll even convince himself

 

 

Less than a week later—four days, to be exact—everything changes again.

 

 

Raleigh and Yancy are curled up together on the couch, each of them with their own books and arranged so that they’re shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. For his part, Raleigh has commandeered Yancy’s copy of _Beyond The Blue Event Horizon_ , while his older brother has decided to get some of his summer reading done at long last. Raleigh has to keep shifting to get comfortable, sliding down until his head is resting against the point of Yancy’s shoulder, but, after a while, that’s uncomfortable as well, so he sits up again. The third time does it, Yancy makes a soft chuckling sound, and Raleigh glares at the side of his brother’s head where the older teen is raptly focused on his own reading. However, eventually he relents, returning his attention to his own book. If anyone had told him a week ago that he’d be enraptured with a book series about “Heechee,” he’d have laughed in their faces.

“Yancy! Raleigh!” comes their mother’s voice from upstairs, and the tone of her voice—worried, anxious, _afraid_ —has Raleigh putting his book down immediately and calling back to her.

“Yeah, Mom? What’s wrong?”

There’s a brief silence, then, “Turn the TV on.”

Raleigh blinks at the instructions, turning to Yancy to make sure he heard correctly. His brother just shrugs at him, nodding towards the remote on the small table next to Raleigh’s side of the couch. Raleigh leans over and grabs it, not missing the way the action draws him away from the warmth of Yancy’s body, and this is _really_ not the time to be thinking about that. Shaking his head, he thumbs over the power button, though not quite pressing it yet.

“You sure you’re okay, Mom?” he asks.

“Yes, Raleigh, dear, I’m fine. Just… you two need to see this.”

Raleigh raises an eyebrow in confusion, watches his brother mimic the gesture but using his left eyebrow instead of his right—and, no, he does not nearly burst out into giggles at that because he is fourteen years old damn it and he is above such things—and hits the power button on the remote.

Chaos greets them.

There’s… _something_ rampaging through San Francisco. Something gray and massive that towers over the buildings like a child walking through a pile of Lego models. People are screaming. Buildings are burning. On-screen, one of the camera crews is trying desperately to get out of the creature’s way, when, abruptly, their signal is cut. A chill goes up Raleigh’s spine, and he pulls his knees to his chest and leans into his brother, shivering. It takes the network a second to react and switch back to footage of the Golden Gate Bridge, now in ruins, with words scrolling along the bottom of the screen shouting that California has declared a state of emergency, but the damage is done.

“What’s going on, Yance?” Raleigh whispers, unable to look away.

“I dunno, kiddo,” the older Becket whispers back, wrapping his arms around his brother, holding him close. “I don’t know.”

 

 

Though their mother stopped having good days a few weeks ago and can no longer walk without help, she orders them, in no uncertain terms, to not leave the house for any reason. The two of them spend the next six days curled up together at the foot of the couch, on the couch, somewhere in the living room, the television still on, watching the creature—now dubbed “Trespasser” by the media and military—casually wreak havoc. Though the news stations keep trying to fly helicopters up close to the creature to get a better look that’s less than a mile and a half distant, each time they try Trespasser will throw something at them—a car, a piece of rubble, it doesn’t matter—with unerring accuracy; they only tried twice. Every now and then the images will cut to footage of politicians blaming various terrorist groups or other countries, but they must realize that, in the wake of such destruction, no one gives a fuck about any of that. At least, not yet.

The military’s gotten involved. On screen, they can see shots of fighters, tanks, everything they can throw at the thing, engaging the monster. More than once, a fighter will get too close, and one of the creature’s clawed hands—one of _four_ —will bat it from the sky in a shower of sparks, screaming metal, and flame.

Eventually, at the end of the fifth day, the military seems to throw its collective hands in the air and starts throwing nukes at it.

When the miniature sun blossoms on the screen, Raleigh feels his heart catch in his throat, and he clutches at his brother’s leg almost subconsciously. Beside him, Yancy tightens his grip on Raleigh’s shoulders. They watch the screen, waiting until they’re no longer blinking spots from their eyes, until the mushroom cloud rises above the blasted-out wreckage of what was once a suburb—once someone’s _home_ —and the dust clears and—

And reveals Trespasser, burned and wounded but still very much alive, screaming into the sky, the sounds issuing from between its fanged maw all rage and hate and _death_. They watch as it continues its rampage for another whole day, another nuke doing almost nothing to slow it down. It isn’t until the third one hits that the monster finally stays down. When it’s declared dead, Raleigh lets out a breath he feels like he’s been holding for six days. Beside him, he hears Yancy doing the same, both of them sagging into each other.

They crawl into Yancy’s bed that night, wrapped around each other, reminding each other that they’re still here, they are _alive_ , and they have each other.

Whatever that might mean.

 

 

_He emerges from the anvil clouds like an arrow, thunder rumbling behind him as he opens his mouth in a cry of exultation. The sky greets him once more, the blue dome holding him gently while the forests below wave like long lost friends. After the tumult of the storm, the colors nearly blind him, but he soaks them up, relishing in the way they seem to fill his chest to the brim until he’s laughing into the wind._

_However, he can’t shake a soft, nagging sensation at the back of his skull telling him that something is wrong—something is missing._

_He almost doesn’t dodge in time._

_The other presence that’s been following—stalking—him this whole time, the blur of shifting colors, dives from above, nearly clipping him in the shoulder. They would’ve collided directly with him if he hadn’t almost instinctively shifted to the side, but instead the slipstream of their passage nearly sends him into a tumble; he only manages to keep himself from falling from the sky by spreading his limbs frantically, trying to marshal the wind to keep him aloft. Looking down, he sees the blur of color abruptly reverse direction, smoothly ascending and coming at him with a joyous cry. The sound pulls a smile onto Raleigh’s face as he flies higher, trying desperately to outmatch his pursuer, knows that if he can just get high enough he’ll be able to outmatch their momentum, but as he gets higher the air grows thinner and his efforts reward him with less and less lift._

_And then, just as he climbs impossibly higher, limbs tiring, the other presence is there, right behind him, and Raleigh can’t help it: he twists around to look._

_A dragon, blue along its spine and green along its belly, greets him, mouth hanging open in a predatory smile filled with jagged teeth; cerulean, reptilian eyes shine with mirth. If it could speak, he imagines the dragon would be muttering a soft, “gotcha.”_

_Raleigh tucks his arms to his body and dives, his own cry a clear, ‘come and get me, then.’_

 

 

Fewer than two weeks later, their mom can’t get out of bed even with their help.

Over her objections, Yancy calls the doctor they’ve had visiting every now and then to check up on her. Raleigh just gives his older brother a _look_ when he hangs up the phone, and Yancy shrugs.

“If she’s not gonna take care of herself then we have to do it for her,” he says by way of explanation. Raleigh shakes his head, not saying anything.

The younger Becket can see the glare their mother sends Yancy’s way when the doctor enters her room behind them, and he nearly quakes from the oblique force behind it; somehow, his brother doesn’t even bat an eyelash. The doctor is an older man, back rigidly straight, gait even and measured, bands of gray just beginning to enter in at his temples, and soulful brown eyes that could grow sharp and assessing at a moment’s notice. As soon as he starts asking his questions, though, the Becket matriarch’s glare vanishes, and she provides answers in short order. Blood is drawn, their mother is checked over for any obvious signs of trauma, a few basic tests are performed—heart rate, blood pressure, and so on—before the doctor packs his things away, saying he’ll give them a call later.

When he leaves, Dominique narrows her eyes in Yancy’s direction, beckoning him to her side in quiet French. Raleigh manages to escape, shutting the door behind him before the argument begins and dashing to his room to put in his headphones. Yancy had gotten his temper and bull-headedness from their mother, so they were probably going to be shouting at each other for a few hours. At least. Unless the Becket patriarch gets home soon and manages to calm them both down.

Raleigh snorts as his music fills his ears.

Yeah right.

 

 

The doctor calls again that night. Raleigh’s the one who answers, his mother and brother still having it out, his father still not home. He listens as the older man drones on and on about medical terminology, test results—things Raleigh doesn’t understand but pretends to anyway. Eventually, though, the word ‘hospitalization’ floats by his ear, and he has to ask the doctor to repeat himself. And then once more, this time in plainer English.

“As you know, your mother’s been deteriorating for a while now, and, though we don’t know why, it’s reached the point that we’ve become worried about her neurological functions. The blood test shows that her muscles have actually started breaking down, though, again, we have no idea why. Whatever is causing it may target her brain and nerves next, so we’d like to bring her in, at least to watch over her and make sure she’s not uncomfortable.”

Raleigh nearly drops the phone. He tells the doctor, voice shaking, that he’ll talk to her about it. He receives a quiet, “We’ll be waiting for you,” and then the line at the other end hangs up.

His mother refuses. She says that, this thing inside of her, whatever it is, is hers to bear.

“But,” she adds, voice and eyes tired as her gaze lands on Yancy and Raleigh in turn, “it is worth it.”

 

 

That night, curled up together in Raleigh’s bed, Raleigh sobs into Yancy’s shoulder, questions pouring from his lips as his eyes burn. Why won’t she fight? Doesn’t she know she’s _dying_? Does she just not love us enough?

Yancy doesn’t answer. He simply rubs at Raleigh’s back with one hand, the other around the younger blond’s waist, presumably to keep him from falling off the bed, and lets Raleigh cry himself to sleep.

 

 

The day Raleigh and Yancy go back to school, their mother dies. It’s a Tuesday.

They arrive home to find the house unusually quiet, their father home early from work and sitting at the kitchen table, a photograph clutched in his hand. Raleigh and Yancy dump their bags on the couch before Raleigh goes up to Richard Becket and asks what’s wrong.

“She’s gone, Raleigh,” the older man says, staring hard at the picture in his hands, of him and Dominique on their wedding day. “The hospital called me when the monitor they had on her flatlined, and by the time they got here there was nothing they could’ve done. Doc even got the spare key out for them so they didn’t have to waste time breaking down the door, but…”

He shrugs, the motion conveying a wealth of helplessness. There’s a pressure building in Raleigh’s chest, and it isn’t until an errant thought crosses his mind— _his mom is gone, she’s never coming back, he’s never going to hear her laugh again, or see her smile, or hear that faint French accent as she says his name_ —that he loses it, the pressure cresting until it breaks his chest open and sobs start to rip themselves from his throat. He’s dimly aware of Yancy joining him a minute later, his arms enfolding both Raleigh and their father.

“It’s alright, guys,” Richard says gently, voice sounding far away. “It’ll be okay. It’s not worth it, okay? You’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine.”

Raleigh doesn’t understand, doesn’t understand anything, but nods against his father’s shoulder anyway, the older man not moving his gaze from the glossy photo of smiling faces.

 

 

Friday night—or perhaps it’s Saturday morning, his tired mind muses—Raleigh is awakened by the sound of the car door slamming shut. At first he doesn’t know what it is, writes it off as another of those noises of the night that always seem to wake him; he knows he’s a light sleeper, after all. But then he hears it again, and, yeah, that’s definitely a car door. He pulls himself from Yancy’s arms, his older brother making a soft sound of protest before Raleigh shushes him back to sleep, telling him he’ll be right back. Ever since their mother died, Yancy had seemed to become almost completely unwilling to leave Raleigh’s side; Raleigh’s not complaining about the extra attention, he just wishes that it hadn’t taken their mother’s death to come about.

Padding on bare feet across the carpet and through the open doorway, Raleigh rubs the sleep from his eyes as he moves towards the lone window that looks out on the front yard, located between the door to Yancy’s bedroom and the bathroom at the end of the hall. As he does, though, a small voice crops up in his mind, whispering that something’s wrong, that there’s some detail he’s overlooking, and tension ratchets up Raleigh’s spine as he continues walking. Once he has a clear view at the front of the house, he sees his father moving around the car, putting bags in the backseat and trunk. Raleigh wracks his brain for a possible explanation, the small voice from before howling to life and screaming at him that he needs to _look_ , needs to _see_. The blond glances around him, trying to figure out what could possibly have—

That’s when he spots it.

Across the stairwell, the door to what used to be his parents’ room—is now his father’s room—is wide open. Inside, Raleigh can see the dresser drawers pulled out, the closet doors flung open; they’re all empty.

The tension gripping his spine freezes, turning to something just shy of panic. His entire body feels frozen.

“Dad!” Raleigh cries, the word bouncing off the walls and nearly deafening him, despite how tired and hoarse his voice may sound. He knows the word won’t carry that far, but he finds that he can’t keep himself from speaking. “Dad, wait!”

As soon as the words leave his lips, the panic also freezes until it’s so cold that it feels like it’s burning. Raleigh’s feet start moving on their own as he stumbles down the hall and towards the stairs, almost tripping and falling as he skips steps, the world stretching obscenely as his vision tunnels. “Dad!”

The front door is closed and locked, and Raleigh wastes a good seven seconds getting his hands to stop shaking enough that he can actually grasp the handle-lock and twist it to the unlocked position. He forgets the deadbolt in his haste, and wastes another few frantic seconds trying to pull the door open anyway—the frame shaking—before he remembers to twist that open as well. When he finally does get out the door, his father has just started the car.

“Dad, please! Wait!” Raleigh calls out to him, voice high and shrill, and he thinks he sees the other man’s head swivel in his direction through the tinted glass. Not a moment later the car is in motion, moving down the driveway and toward the road. A constant stream of words are pouring from Raleigh’s lips at this point as he gives chase, running after the vehicle that’s carrying his father farther and farther away from him.

“Dad, no, please stop! Dad, please! Why are you doing this? Please, _stop_! Dad, _please_ —”

The car speeds up, the distance between them increasing. Raleigh’s openly begging at this point, eyes blurring with tears, and he doesn’t care. He can’t lose his mom and his dad at the same time. He doesn’t know how he can—

A dip in the driveway’s surface—a crack, maybe—catches his foot, and Raleigh has a split second to realize that he’s falling before his arms and knees meet the pavement, his forehead bouncing against the bones of his forearms where they’d reflexively moved to protect his face. He tastes dirt and blood.

All the energy leaves his body at the impact, and Raleigh deflates, tears falling from his eyes, snot running down his face as he curls inward upon himself and just… breaks down. Words, phrases, recriminations ( _not good enough why aren’t we good enough why did he leave what’re we gonna do_ ) keep bouncing around his head. He screams, _howls_ his frustration and helplessness and sorrow into the ground as his entire body spasms. Everything feels broken, falling apart, and he doesn’t know what to do, how to hang on, how to keep going. His head falls until it’s cradled in his forearms, elbows digging into the pavement, and then he allows his body to flop onto his right side, no longer hunched over. He lets out a huff of silvery breath when his shoulder and hip collide with the hard ground, pebbles and ridges in the driveway digging into his skin through the material of his t-shirt and sweatpants.

He stays there, shivering, head in his arms, body numb despite feeling like his entire chest is going to cave in at any moment. He can see blood dripping off of his left elbow, can feel the warm trickle of it where it’s flowing from a cut somewhere on his arm, but finds that he can’t feel the pain of it, as if his body’s decided that it’s just not going to feel anything at all. For some reason, this just makes him cry harder.

Nothing feels real anymore.

“Raleigh?”

The voice is far away, and, distantly, Raleigh recognizes the word as his own name. However, he can’t bring himself to move. Everything is frozen, stuck, and he shakes harder as a chill creeps over him. He can hear footsteps approaching him—running, it sounds like—and then there’s Yancy’s voice right beside him, warm hands on his exposed arms and legs.

“Oh my god, kid, what—we have to get you inside, you’re _freezing_ , you’re—shit, is that blood?”

Raleigh doesn’t answer, can’t answer, and instead turns his body slightly into his brother’s touch. He hears the older teen saying something, can’t make out what the words are, and the next thing he knows, those same hands are twining around him and he’s being carried, bridal-style, back to the house. The entire way, Raleigh knows his brother is still talking, can feel the warm words being breathed into his hair, but he doesn’t know—can’t understand—what the words mean. All he knows is that his mom and dad are gone but Yancy is _still here_ , still with him. One of his hands claws desperately at the hoodie Yancy’d thrown on, getting a grip in the soft material and hanging on for dear life. Dimly, he’s aware that Yancy is fumbling with the front door, and then they’re inside, the warmth of the house enfolding him in measures.

His back meets something soft, and it’s only then that Raleigh realizes that he’s being put on the couch. When Yancy tries to pull away, he clings on stubbornly.

“Rals,” Yancy whispers into his ears, “I need to go get stuff to clean up your, well, your cuts, okay?”

The words sounds muffled, far away, but they’re definitely there, definitely _real_. Raleigh relaxes his grip slightly, but doesn’t let go.

“Please, Yancy,” he whispers wetly into his brother’s chest, eyes squeezed shut, the taste of copper flooding his mouth every time he speaks, “please don’t leave me, too.”

“I’m not goin’ anywhere, Rals,” Yancy murmurs softly, fingers wrapping around Raleigh’s wrist where he’s still holding onto the older teen’s shirt, “but I do need to go get the first aid kit, okay? You got kinda scraped up when you fell.”

Raleigh, however, just tightens his grip, not opening his eyes.

“Promise?” he asks, hating how childish and garbled his voice sounds, but, at the same time, not really finding it within himself to truly _care_ , either, because this is _Yancy_ , his _brother_.

When he answers, there’s something in Yancy’s voice—some depth of meaning—that Raleigh can _hear_ , but he doesn’t _understand_. It’s as if he’s trying to tell Raleigh something, trying to communicate some idea or message beyond the simple words.

“I promise, kiddo. I’m not gonna leave you. Not like him. Not ever.”

Raleigh’s mind is at war. On one hand, he knows that he needs to have his cuts looked at, probably disinfected—and now that he’s actually thinking about them, his knees, arms, elbows, and face all start to throb. On the other hand, his grip on Yancy is the only thing that’s convincing him that his brother is still actually _there_ , isn’t some trick his mind is playing on him. Also, in some selfish way, Raleigh enjoys having his brother this close, feeling the hard muscles of the other teen’s body, tempered by the lacrosse he’d taken up in ninth grade, under his palm, even though he knows it’s fucked up—has known ever since he told Yancy how he felt that to feel this way is fucked up, but he can’t seem to _stop_. Eventually, though, his face gives a particularly painful throb, and he gasps and lets go. Raleigh curls in on himself, his arm falling back onto his stomach as he turns on his side.

He hears Yancy’s footsteps receding, moving up the stairs, and then silence except for faint rummaging sounds. When the steps descend the stairs again, he cracks open an eye to see Yancy kneeling beside the couch, gauze and peroxide in hand. When he catches Raleigh looking, he offers the younger blond a small smile.

“This is gonna hurt, okay Rals? So, yeah, sorry ahead of time. Also, I’m gonna start with your lips and chin. That okay?”

Raleigh nods timidly, rolling himself slightly onto his back, his body starting to ache dully all over. However, as soon as Yancy’s hand is on his cheek, guiding him to look up with a tender brush of fingers, the aches don’t seem that important anymore. He stares into his brother’s eyes, sees the love there, the promise from earlier, and he suddenly feels completely safe; he can’t explain why, but just having Yancy there is enough to make him not quite so afraid. His brother must also see something in his eyes, because he smiles softly as he dabs at the cut on Raleigh’s chin with the peroxide-soaked gauze, cleaning away the blood.

“It’ll be okay, kid. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you. We’re gonna be fine.”

 

 

Raleigh never sees Yancy grieve their father’s departure. It doesn’t help him feel any better about it.

 

 

As it turns out, living in the ass-end of nowhere—that is to say, in a house in the middle of the mountains outside of Anchorage—has its advantages. Namely, that the house isn’t very expensive, so the mortgage had apparently been paid off several years ago. However, that does still leave them with the problem of power, water, internet, phones, and taxes. And food, of course. Yancy has some savings from a few odd jobs he’d worked over the various summers. Raleigh has birthday money from the past few years saved up in an account his parents had set up for him when he was little. Yancy, however, tells Raleigh to keep his money, that it’s his and that he should spend it on things he wants. Raleigh tells his brother that what he _wants_ is to help. The _look_ Yancy sends his way tells him that his brother is not amused by the response.

“I told you that I’m not gonna let anything happen to you, Rals. I’m gonna take care of us, kiddo. We’ll be fine.”

 

 

Raleigh has no idea how his brother does it, but he finds a job. Some paper-pushing job in the city. It doesn’t pay much, but it’s enough to pay the bills and feed them. Admittedly, they have to swap out their smartphones for “dumb phones,” as Yancy jokingly calls them, and switch to a limited-talk-and-text plan, but at least they have a way to get in contact with each other in an emergency. He’s also managed to wrangle his way into a carpool, since they no longer have a car of their own. Charismatic bastard. There is, however, just one problem.

“What do you mean _you’re dropping out_?” Raleigh screams in Yancy’s face when he comes back from his interview, throwing his older brother’s words back in his face. “You just got accepted into colleges, Yance! You can’t go to college if you don’t finish school!”

“You think I don’t know that?” Yancy yells back, eyes flashing. “Do you think that if I could work a job and go to school I’d do it? Do you think this is what I _want_ to be doing with my life—” He stops, teeth clacking as his jaw snaps shut, but it’s too late. The words are already out there. Cold rage slithers into Raleigh’s belly.

“Well, then don’t,” he hisses. “I never asked for any of this.

He can almost hear the anger leaving his brother when Yancy slumps slightly, looking down, a hand coming up to rub at his forehead as he sighs loudly.

“I didn’t ask for it either, kid, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you starve. Or let either of us get put in the system.”

“Then—”

“But you are gonna ruin your own chances at having a life over my dead fucking body.” Yancy’s gaze is heavy and commanding, absolute, unshakeable conviction deep within its depths.

It’s Raleigh’s turn to clamp his mouth shut, holding back the words ( _Then let me help_ ) that’d been on the tip of his tongue. He breathes deeply through his nose several times, biting back the urge to snap at his brother and ask why Yancy gets to make decisions like that, then, if he can’t, before he finally says, softly, “Okay. Fine.”

A rush of weariness passes through him suddenly, and the words he’d been restraining come to the surface anyway, though not quite the same. “I just wish you didn’t have to ruin your own chances, Yance. You could have so much more than,” Raleigh gestures around himself at the empty house, “ _this_.”

Yancy’s own stance slumps, his face softening as the anger and cold, flinty authority flee his eyes.

“Oh, kiddo,” he breathes, reaching a hand out and clasping Raleigh’s still-healing face in a grasp that’s so tender the younger blond finds himself leaning into it almost reflexively, “don’t you get it? All of this,” he mimics Raleigh’s encompassing hand gesture one-handed, “all this _other stuff_ —none of it matters.”

His brother’s thumb starts stroking lazily over his cheekbone, and Raleigh’s eyes slip shut of their own accord. He feels a strong arm wrap around his shoulders, his body being pressed into Yancy’s chest, and he nuzzles into his brother’s collarbone.

“The only thing that matters,” Yancy says, breath puffing at Raleigh’s hair, “the only thing I _need_ , is you.”

 

 

Raleigh rides the bus to school alone after that.

His teachers and the few friends he’s managed to carry over from middle school ask after his brother, but Raleigh merely says the older Becket is sick.

After all, it’s none of their business.

 

 

_He twists and turns in the sky, pitching one way and then the other, slowing his pace but keeping the blue and green dragon from accurately predicting which direction he’s going to go. There’s a sudden tension between his shoulder blades, and he lets himself drop a few feet as a colored blur shoots through the space he’d just occupied. He can hear an annoyed huff over the sound of the air screaming past him, and he wheels around, setting off in the other direction before the dragon can get its bearings and give chase. It’s all part of an endless game of cat and mouse, the goal always to evade the other as long as possible. Raleigh is very good at this game; he’s been the mouse for a long time, now._

_When he looks back, he sees the dragon flapping its broad wings frantically, pouring on speed and gaining on him._

_So Raleigh turns around, smirks, and drops like a stone. His focus shifts from the dragon behind him to the ground rushing up at him, racing the other to the forest floor. He hears the cry of challenge resonating from above. All he knows—can think about—is the sound of the wind whistling past his ears, the feeling of the dragon diving behind and beside him, the warmth building in his chest as the earth looms closer and closer and closer and—_

_And then it’s suddenly right there, and Raleigh gives a shout of surprise as he flails, spreading his limbs wide, feeling them strain as he tries to slow himself down in time to stop._

_He meets the ground with bone-crushing force, and everything goes black._

 

 

Yancy’s eighteenth birthday comes and goes with little fanfare. Both boys do, however, breathe a sigh of relief that someone from the government hasn’t yet come knocking. They both know it’s a combination of the fact that their father had simply gone away—not died or something else, something more public—and pure luck. Neither of them talk about it, simply allow themselves to bask in the feeling that, for a moment, maybe the world isn’t shitting on them.

Raleigh tries to ask his brother what he wants as a present, but Yancy stubbornly refuses to answer. However, Raleigh still rides his bike to the grocery store to pick up cake mix and frosting. When his brother arrives home that evening, there’s a double-decker chocolate and yellow cake with cream cheese frosting—Yancy’s favorite when they were kids—waiting for him.

Things might not be perfect, but the smile that lights up his brother’s face fills Raleigh with enough happiness and hope that, really, he doesn’t care. This moment, right now, between him and Yancy, his brother dropping his bag on the floor by the door and gathering the younger Becket in his arms while whispering soft words of thanks, is perfect enough for him.

 

 

On Raleigh’s birthday, the younger blond bakes another cake for Yancy using the left over half-containers of the chocolate and yellow cake mixes. When his brother protests, Raleigh informs him that Yancy is the reason he even gets to celebrate in the first place, so it should be a celebration for both of them.

Yancy scowls at him, but Raleigh ignores it with a smile as he takes another bite of confection.

 

 

Things proceed in a kind of stasis for roughly six months.

Though Raleigh is almost always waking Yancy up because his brother is such a heavy sleeper and tends to ignore the alarm, the two of them end up getting up at about the same time each day before they go for a run together. After all, neither of them having sports to keep themselves in shape any longer, Yancy because of work, and Raleigh because he wouldn’t have had a ride home so he didn’t try out in the first place, so they make do with what they can. Afterward, they have breakfast that usually consists of cereal or pop tarts, one eating while the other showers. They trade off which of them showers first, since the person who goes second usually makes something for the first to eat when they get downstairs, while the first trades off by cleaning any dishes used. After that, Yancy walks Raleigh to his bus stop, waits with him until the bus arrives, then goes back to the house for approximately twenty minutes and waits to be picked up; the exact time, he says, apparently depends on how late his carpool is running.

Raleigh, for his part, goes to his classes, eats his bagged lunch—usually leftovers from dinner—with the few friends he has, finishes his classes, then catches the bus home. After he’s safely back inside the house, he does his homework and waits for Yancy to get home. Once they’re reunited, they have dinner and swap stories of their day before they relax for an hour or two together; typically, this will involve reading or watching the television or both. Finally, whenever one of them is tired enough to go to bed, they crawl up the stairs to Raleigh’s room. Some nights, Yancy sleeps on his old bed that’s still against the opposite wall. More often than not, though, they both squeeze onto Raleigh’s bed, clinging desperately to one another to try and not feel so alone. It alternates which of them makes the request that they not spend the night apart, although Raleigh’s pretty sure that at least seventy percent of the time it’s him.

True, such a schedule doesn’t leave much room for friendships; indeed, Raleigh doesn’t have any friends that he hangs out with outside of school or whom he even _talks_ to outside of school beyond a few conversations over various VOIPs, but he’s happy that way, really. It’s simpler. Plus, it means that he doesn’t have to explain to anyone why he and Yancy are living in their house in, relatively speaking, the middle of nowhere without any parents.

 

 

The first interruption to their life is when the second monster—now dubbed Kaiju—emerges from the ocean and hits Manila just over halfway through the school year. Yancy and Raleigh both continue about their lives as per normal, but that evening is spent watching the news reports as the monster, this time named Hundun, kills tens of thousands of civilians, and then the military kills thousands more when they nuke it in the middle of Taguig City. A cold kind of terror overtakes Raleigh as he curls into Yancy’s side, a voice at the back of his mind whispering that this is just the beginning. The first attack might’ve been a random chance, but two? No. He’s almost positive that there are more of these monsters to come. Worse is the realization that the attacks have taken place in costal Pacific cities in the northern hemisphere.

Just like Anchorage.

It might be his mind making a pattern out of nothing, but Raleigh can’t seem to find sleep that night. Or the night afterward.

On the third night, he finally manages to pass out with Yancy’s arms around him, holding back the impending panic as he clings desperately to his brother: the only thing that seems to be solid and immutable in an ever-changing world.

 

 

The second interruption to their new life is when the computer their father had left them dies out of the blue, quite literally a few days before the start of the new term. It had been a gift to Yancy from their parents for his fifteenth birthday, and the brothers have been using to get web access and as a way for Raleigh to write his papers. Now, though, it won’t start at all. Neither of the Beckets are strangers to technology, nor are either of them ignorant in terms of knowing how to troubleshoot a computer. It’s just that, no matter what they do, nothing works.

“I can just do my papers at the library,” Raleigh offers, but Yancy’s glare makes him look down at his feet.

“We need a computer at home, kiddo,” the older Becket grits out through his teeth, like he’s hating the words even as he’s saying them. “S’not fair to expect you to bike all the way downtown for a freaking paper or to do research or something.”

That weekend, they go computer shopping. At first, Raleigh—like any teenager when exposed to copious amounts of technology—beelines straight for the most advanced systems the store owns. However, when he catches sight of the comma after the first digit in their price, he gulps and moves on. After that, he pays careful attention to the price tags of everything he looks at, keeping an eye on the way his brother squirms uncomfortably at almost every single one of them. So he purposefully moves towards the opposite end of the shelf from where he’d started, where almost every three-digit price begins with a two or three. Eventually, they settle on a refurbished twelve-inch netbook for just over two hundred dollars. Yancy had refused to get something smaller, even when Raleigh had pointed out the marginally cheaper ten-inch model, saying that even he drew a line somewhere. Even so, Yancy hadn’t looked happy, but Raleigh gives him a huge hug and whispers a soft “Thanks, bro,” in his ear.

After all, as Raleigh tells him when they get home later, unpacking their new purchase and charging it, it’s not like he needs anything fancy to use the internet or write school papers.

“I know, kiddo,” Yancy says softly. “I just… I wish I could get you something better.”

Raleigh snorts at that, putting the netbook gingerly on the bed that has, once again, become Yancy’s bed in his bedroom—even if his older brother doesn’t usually use it—and walks over to the other teen, wrapping his arms around the older blond’s shoulders. He lays his forehead in the dip just above Yancy’s collarbone, unable to keep from smiling.

“All of this other stuff, Yance,” he says softly, mimicking Yancy’s words from back when all of this insanity had first started, “none of it matters. All that matters to me is you.”

His brother, of course, recognizes the phrase, and looks taken aback for a moment before his eyes soften.

“Rals, kid, I—” he starts, but Raleigh moves back a half inch and headbutts his brother in the shoulder.

“Shut up and just accept it, old man,” he grouses, smiling.

“Hey!” Yancy whisper-shouts, pulling away to glare at Raleigh, though it’s rather ruined by the smile on his face. “I’m only three years older than you, kid!”

“Yeah, well, when November rolls around you’ll be four years older than me.”

“For, like, a month.”

“A month and _four days_.”

“Oh my _god_ , shut _up_ , brat.”

Yancy tackles him onto the bed with a laugh, smile as telling as his tone that he doesn’t mean the insult, and they begin an all-out tickle war. It’s a bad idea because, as history has proven, Yancy is much more ticklish than Raleigh. Before too long, Raleigh has his brother on his back, squirming under him as he digs his fingers into the older blond’s armpits. When Yancy finally calls uncle in disjointed, half-sobbing laughter, Raleigh shoves his brother’s still-twitching form over, rolling between him and the wall. They both take a moment to catch their breath, Yancy still letting out chuckles as his body comes down from so much laughter. Once they’re both breathing at something approaching a normal rate, Raleigh leans up on his elbow and places a palm in the middle of Yancy’s chest; as he’d hoped, the action draws his brother’s eyes to his own.

“I meant it, though,” Raleigh tells the other teen, bearing down with the hand on Yancy’s chest to emphasize his point. “So long as I have you, I… I’ll be fine. I know that’s selfish of me, but, I just…”

He trails off, words ( _love you so much_ ) left unsaid. Yancy, however, just nods, placing a hand over the younger blond’s.

“I know kiddo,” he says softly, fingers tracing the veins on the back of Raleigh hand. “I know. I get it.”

Raleigh doesn’t allow himself to think about what Yancy means by that—can’t—and instead shuffles until his head is also on his brother’s chest, the older teen’s heartbeat beneath his ear, letting the gentle rise and fall of the ribcage beneath him rock him to sleep.

 

 

The third and fourth interruptions occur almost simultaneously, although Raleigh doesn’t quite remember them. The first day of summer vacation—the last Saturday in May—Raleigh gets sick.

The first day’s not so bad. Just a feeling of constantly being too cold and a slight tremor in his hands. He pays it no mind because, well, it’s almost June; more to the point, it’s _Alaska_. Yancy goes in to work as per normal, so Raleigh spends the first day of his break moping around the house listlessly, gathering as many sweaters and blankets as he can to wrap around himself as he sits in bed and cracks open his summer reading.

By the time Yancy gets home, Raleigh has a slight sore throat and his head feels two sizes too small. He figures it’s simply because it’s so cold in the house, but, no matter how much he turns up the heat, he can’t seem to _get warm enough_.

“Rals, I’m home!” Yancy calls to him, and Raleigh heaves himself out of bed on legs that feel like they’re made out of marshmallow, bundling himself in blankets as he shivers from the cold air that brushes against his skin like a blade’s edge.

“Jesus, kid, hot enough in here for you?” he hears Yancy ask aloud as he heads up the steps, footfalls rhythmic on the carpeted wood. “Rals? You up here?”

Raleigh’s about halfway to the bedroom door when Yancy opens it. His brother takes one look at him and then, in what seems like an instant, is at his side, hand splayed against Raleigh’s forehead. His fingers feel like ice, and Raleigh hisses and flinches away, trembling. Yancy’s eyes widen.

“Jesus, kid, you’re burning up, what—have you been like this all day?”

Raleigh opens his mouth to speak, but all he can get out through the shivering is, “C-c-cold, Yance…”

This time, when Yancy touches him, it’s slowly, allowing the younger Becket time to get used to the way his fingers feel like a cold dagger pushing into his flesh. His older brother hisses this time as Raleigh leans into his Yancy’s touch, the other teen’s touch no longer torturous as his body becomes something closer to Raleigh’s own feverish temperature.

“Kiddo, you’re really burning up. Let me get the thermometer and some Tylenol, okay? Can you get back in the bed for me?” Yancy asks him, and all Raleigh can do is nod. By the time he manages to plod back to the frigid embrace of his cooled sheets, the blond feels like he’s run a marathon. Dutifully, though, he slips under the covers, bringing the blankets with him. He loses track of time until Yancy gets back—it could’ve been an hour or ten seconds for all his fever-addled mind knows—and helps him sit up.

“Mouth open,” Yancy instructs, and Raleigh complies, jumping slightly when the cold metal of the device catches under his tongue.

“Close.”

The younger Becket does as he’s told, listening to his older brother recount his day at work while the thermometer’s digital gauge creeps towards its final target. Apparently, someone named Julia had gotten fired for hitting a coworker in the face with a glass Coke bottle she’d brought from home; rumor had it that they’d been dating but that they’d broken up, badly, several days ago. In the middle of Yancy telling him another amusing story, this time involving an email filled with kittens that’d apparently been circulating the office, the thermometer beeps, telling them it’s done. Yancy slips it from between Raleigh’s lips, reads it, and draws in a harsh breath.

“102.1. Jesus, kid. How do you not feel like shit?”

“I do,” Raleigh murmured back, curling the covers tighter around himself, pulling them up around his neck and nuzzling into their depths. A sigh reaches his ears, and he sees Yancy put the thermometer away and pick up a pair of pills and a glass of water he’d brought in earlier. He holds the pills out to Raleigh, but Raleigh can’t seem to force his arms to leave the confines of the blankets—it’s so _cold_ in the house—and instead opens his mouth, making a sad, plaintive sound. Yancy sighs at him, but obediently places the pills on Raleigh’s tongue with a soft, “The things I do for you, kiddo. Be glad I love you,” before he lifts the glass to Raleigh’s lips. The blond takes as small of a sip of the cold liquid as he can—it feels like a knife burrowing through his guts when he swallows it—grateful that at least it took the pills down with it. He whines unhappily when Yancy moves away, because, even though his brother feels frozen to his feverish skin, the knowledge that the older Becket is nearby helps in its own way. Raleigh’s sure that his brother rolls his eyes at the sound, but he finds he doesn’t care when the older blond obligingly moves back onto the bed with him, curling around his shivering body and placing a kiss in his sweaty hair.

“‘m right here, kiddo,” Yancy mumbles softly. “I gotcha.”

 

 

The next week or so is something of a blur to Raleigh. He remembers things in flashes, his vision warping at the corners, the edges of everything sticking out too far, too sharply, for his mind to fully believe it’s real. And all the while he feels like he’s floating, somehow divorced from reality.

He remembers waking up, lying on the couch with Yancy reading something to him—what, he doesn’t know—his brother’s voice flowing over him in a constant wave, soothing his aching head with its constant, even, soft tone.

He remembers asking why his brother isn’t at work, and arguing with the answer that he doesn’t hear.

He remembers a frantic beeping coming from the television, and then frenzied images and terror leaking from the set like icy blue tendrils trying to strangle them. He remembers hearing the words “Cabo” and “Kaiju” and “Kaiceph,” though part of him wonders if the whole thing is a delusion of his overheated mind.

He remembers watching as the military doesn’t even bother with tanks and planes this time, and instead drop several nukes on the monster in the middle of the city. He remembers Yancy’s arms stiffening around him as those miniature suns spawn in tandem, hurting Raleigh’s eyes even through the screen. He remembers the light making his head hurt even worse, remembers mumbling something to Yancy before he leans over, groaning, his brother shifting and shoving a trash can in his face just in time for him to throw up into it; he remembers that what comes out of him smells vile, like death, and it just makes him heave harder.

After that, he remembers a brief image of Yancy dragging him up the stairs, followed by what he knows must be a fever dream: Yancy whispering something to him, though he can’t seem to focus on the words, and then his brother is placing a soft kiss against his lips and Raleigh’s heart nearly leaps out of his chest. He remembers that he ends up trying to throw up again, dry heaving painfully into a trash can Yancy gets from beside the bed. Then, when his muscles have stopped spasming, he remembers Yancy pulling his shuddering body close, a soft kiss being placed at the base of his neck, and then the blackness of sleep and the strange, vivid colors of dreaming.

He remembers waking at some point, the sensation of falling, and a fire that’d crept from his chest up into his throat and a taste, the taste of—why is it so hard to breathe? Yancy? Why are your eyes so bright help me I can’t breathe it hurts Yancy I don’t know what to do please Yancy please you have to do something it _hurts_.

Black spots swim in a field of white, dancing and pirouetting around each other as they murmur words in his ear, strange sounds he does not understand, _can_ not understand, in a dead language that has never existed. The sky rises up to meet him in a blaze of pure light that reflects off the mirrored facets of his brother’s face and onto his skin like a soft caress, cutting and burning and leaving golden ashes that burrow into his flesh and sing to him, sing a song of a blue and green streak in the sky that is screaming his name, whispering it under the high wind like a prayer.

And then there is only darkness.

 

 

_He pushes himself to go faster, air whistling past his ears as he rockets over the treetops. A loud roar echoes behind him, and he grins, turning and evading to the right just as the familiar blue and green dragon zooms past him. Branches catch at his arms, scraping him as he flies by at incredible speed, and the pain makes him almost instinctively climb higher. Once he starts his ascent, though, he finds he doesn’t want to stop, and so he propels himself to go higher and higher until the trees merge into a single, beautiful carpet of green and the clouds dance with him._

_The same roar as before sounds from below, and Raleigh opens his mouth to let out a cry in response, his own playful challenge, before he plunges into a bank of clouds, ice crystals melting on his skin like a freezing fire, sending a chilled shudder through his entire body._

 

 

When Raleigh regains consciousness, it’s to find himself lying in an unfamiliar bed. The mattress isn’t nearly as soft as his own, the sheets don’t feel right, and the smell is all wrong. It doesn’t smell like him and Yancy, more like something antiseptic. There’s something poking him in the arm, and an alarm clock somewhere won’t stop freaking _beeping_. His mind takes all these facts in, files them under ‘unknown’, and proceeds to panic slightly.

And then he notices that there’s something warm and solid and _familiar_ pressed into his side, and he tilts his head towards it and opens his eyes. He’s greeted with the sight of Yancy’s sleeping face, inches from his own. Raleigh’s eyes track down to his brother’s lips, the memory of the dream-kiss playing out in his mind, and he licks his lips, trying to savor the feeling, even if it’d been imaginary. Regardless, the sight of his brother is enough to quell the impending panic attack because, really, so long as Yancy is here, it doesn’t matter. He leans his head forward, noticing that his brother’s face looks haggard even in sleep, dark circles under both eyes, and places an absentminded kiss on Yancy’s forehead before he lays his head back down. Some part of his mind takes note of the fact that, now that his eyes are open, he can see monitors and an IV in his peripheral vision, so clearly this is a hospital, but he’s just so _tired_ that he finds he doesn’t really care. He’ll find out later.

He closes his eyes again, forehead resting against Yancy’s so that his brother’s exhales are tickling his chin, and falls asleep once more.

 

 

He’s been in the hospital for three days, apparently. Yancy tells him he’d been fighting some kind of pneumonia infection, and that, on day three, he’d called 911 when Raleigh’d been completely out of it and started coughing up blood and some strange sort of greenish-yellow gunk. When the paramedics had arrived, Raleigh’s temperature had been just under a hundred and six degrees.

According to his older brother, he’d been unconscious for most of the time in-hospital, the doctors pumping him full of so many drugs and fluids and fever reducers it’d made Yancy’s head spin trying to keep track of them all. Raleigh had, apparently, gained consciousness two times previously, but had mostly been incoherent, once not even recognizing Yancy and asking for “my real brother.” Through it all, Yancy had remained at his side, and he laughs as he tells the younger Becket how he’d scared several nurses when they’d tried to touch Raleigh, even if they were only trying to do their jobs.

When Raleigh asks his brother how much sleep he’d gotten, Yancy airily waves the question off with a literal wave of his hand and a soft, “enough.” The dark circles under his eyes are even more obvious with sunlight shining through the windows, but Raleigh chooses to bite his tongue and not say anything.

The doctors say that they want him to stay overnight for observation, though, when Raleigh tries to argue that he feels fine, the rush of dizziness he gets when he tries to sit up does nothing to help his point. In fact, ultimately, it’s Yancy who pushes him back down on the bed, telling him to rest and get some sleep in that soft voice to which Raleigh’d never been able to say no.

“Get some rest, kiddo,” Yancy tells him, running his thumb over the back of the younger Becket’s hand. “I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

 

 

The next day, Raleigh goes home.

Before they leave, someone from the finances department comes and talks to them. When Yancy explains their situation—their parents are both out of the picture, and the older teen had dropped out of school in order to take care of Raleigh—the woman handling their case becomes instantly more sympathetic, and tells them that she’ll be right back, that she has to check on a few things. The two of them sit for a few minutes—well, Yancy sits, Raleigh lies in the bed, fidgeting in his hospital gown. Yancy occasionally makes a joke to try and get Raleigh to laugh or smile while Raleigh tries his hardest not to think about the fact that Yancy’s been out of work for a whole week at this point.

When their case worker returns, she’s holding a form that she has Yancy fill as the responsible adult who is taking care of the younger Becket and therefore going to be paying for the bill. The grin and raised eyebrow Yancy sends him as she says the words make Raleigh have to bite his own fist to keep from snorting aloud, because, Yancy? Responsible adult? Once the older Becket finishes, she announces that she’ll see what payment plans she can get for them. Once she leaves again, this time for good and with a promise to call them once she has more information, Raleigh lets his brother help him dress.

He tries not to think too much about the way Yancy’s eyes linger on him when he pulls the gown off. Or the way they once flicker quickly up and down his body. Or the way the other teen’s cheeks tinge pink.

He tries, but he fails.

Once he’s dressed, he takes approximately two steps (okay, maybe it’d only been one) towards the door before he stumbles, and Yancy ends up catching him in strong arms. Of course he does, Raleigh thinks ruefully to himself.

“Whoa, easy there kiddo,” Raleigh tries not to shiver at his brother’s voice as it ghosts over the shell of his ear. “Don’t push yourself too hard, okay?”

“‘M not a fucking invalid, Yance,” the younger teen grouses, but he leans into the touch anyway because, well, it’s Yancy. Also, okay, maybe standing is kind of difficult at the moment. Yancy helps him down to the main entrance, and pulls out his phone and flips it open to call a cab; however, before he can finish finding the number in his contacts, a man from the help desk calls to them, asking if they’re the Beckets.

They both look up, surprised, and it’s a moment before Yancy haltingly says, “Uh, yeah?”

“Carol contacted us about your case,” he explains after he moves from behind the desk so that they’re not shouting across the lobby. “She asked us to call the hospital shuttle to take you two home once you’re out. Said you didn’t need to pay for something as simple as a ride home.”

“Oh, no, it’s fine, really,” Yancy protests, waving the arm that’s still holding his phone, and Raleigh can practically feel his brother’s blush through his clothes. “We’re fine. You guys don’t have to go out of your way for us or anything.”

The man looks at them for a moment, then shakes his head, smiling. “It’s no trouble. It’s a free service we already offer. Besides,” his smile drops, “though we’re not allowed to talk about other patients specifically, there are plenty of people that walk through these doors that are much better off than you two, and they demand so much more than you have. And,” he rubs at the back of his neck, giving them a meaningful look, “there are plenty of staff here than can empathize with your situation. We _want_ to help.”

Raleigh feels a prickling on the side of his face, and glances over to find Yancy staring at him. His knees almost give out under the force of that gaze, and it’s his turn to flush. There’s so much emotion in that look, so many feelings Raleigh can’t even begin to try and identify, and he feels gooseflesh spring up on his skin as his brother opens his mouth to speak softly, words caressing Raleigh’s lips.

“You’ve given me my brother back. You all saved his life. I don’t… I can’t ask you for more than that.”

Raleigh can’t contain the shudder than runs through his body as the emotions reflected in his older brother’s eye leak out through his voice, the younger blond inhaling them.

“Then don’t,” the man says just as softly, smiling again as his hands slide into his pockets, posture relaxed. “The shuttle’s already on its way. Jeff,” he hooks a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the brunet talking into a headset and typing on a computer that was out of sight, “already called them when I came over here to talk to you boys. I’ll confess, I was mostly a distraction to make sure you didn’t just run off.”

“I…” Raleigh watches his brother, can see the moment the other teen seems to realize that he doesn’t have to do this all alone, that it’s okay to ask for help—can see how much he struggles after almost a year of doing just that. Eventually, he just looks back over at the man—some part of Raleigh’s mind reminds him that they don’t even know this guy’s name—and nods slightly. “Thank you.”

 

 

Since he doesn’t have school, and he proves the next morning that, yes, he can navigate the house all on his own, Raleigh convinces Yancy to call his carpool and go back to work. True, he’s still moving slowly, and the stairs take him a little extra time, but it’s not like he’s going to piss himself or anything.

“Fine,” Yancy agrees grudgingly when Raleigh demonstrates his ability to climb the stairs for the second time that morning, breathing heavily with exertion, “but keep your phone on you at all times. I expect a text from you every hour on the hour to tell me how and what you’re doing. If you need help, call me and I’ll get home.”

Raleigh sighs noisily, eyes tracking to the ceiling then back down to his brother’s face as he leans against the wall.

“Okay, yes, fine, whatever. I’ll be _fine_ , Yance. Just,” Raleigh makes a shooing motion with his hand, “ _go_. You’re gonna miss your ride.”

Yancy heaves a sigh of his own, sends one last regretful look Raleigh’s way with a muttered, “I just… I wish I didn’t have to go,” before he visibly steels his spine and takes a few steps forward, reaching out to put a hand on Raleigh’s jaw and placing a kiss on the younger blond’s forehead, adding a whispered, “Stay safe, kid.”

“I will,” Raleigh whispers back, closing his eyes at the sensation of his brother’s lips on his skin. Before he can even blink them open, Yancy is gone, feet tromping down the stairs and out the door.

 

 

When Yancy reappears that evening, it’s to find Raleigh, unsurprisingly, curled up with a book. The younger Becket had been on a Phillip K. Dick binge before his hospital visit, and the collection of short stories is due back at the library in a few days, so he had figured he might as well get through it. Raleigh catches Yancy’s movement into the bedroom out of the corner of his eye, looks up, and feels a surge of warmth in his chest at the sight of his brother that pulls a smile onto his face.

“Hey,” he greets, shifting his feet under the blankets and sliding over to make room for Yancy if the older teen wanted it, “how was work?”

“Good,” Yancy smiles at him, the expression looking wrong somehow, and pulling up the blankets. He slides in next to Raleigh, face down on the bed, his shoulder against Raleigh’s hip. “I managed to pick up some extra shifts—night shifts, really—so I can make up the hours I missed. And that woman from the hospital called me. Said that they’re gonna get us on a payment plan or something, so that we can pay off the bills in small pieces instead of all at once.”

Raleigh doesn’t miss the way Yancy’s shoulders go tight slightly at the words, so he runs his hand over his brother’s shoulder blades, trying to soothe away the tension, and asks, “Is that all? Did something else happen, Yance?”

Yancy’s quiet for a few moments, his shoulders still not relaxing as Raleigh continues rubbing at them, before finally he lets out a long breath.

“Yeah,” he murmurs into the sheets, “I got a call from the bank today, too.”

Something cold curls up in Raleigh’s chest. His hand stops moving for a moment before he chastises himself and continues, pads of his fingers catching slightly as they glide over the material of Yancy’s shirt.

“Oh. What, uh, what did they say?”

Yancy grumbles something, and Raleigh has to rub a little harder, shaking his brother almost playfully as he softly asks, “Sorry, what was that, Yance?”

The older Becket rolls over, lifting one limb so that his forearm is covering his eyes, and Raleigh has to try to not think about the fact that his hand is now splayed over Yancy’s chest. The older blond eventually whispers, “They said that the electric bill overdrew our account. It was an automated message to tell me that they paid it and that we owe the bank an extra sixty five bucks.”

“Shit,” Raleigh whispers, the cold weight in his chest dropping into his stomach. However, as soon as he says it, Yancy’s jaw clenches and he takes in a small, short breath, and, if Raleigh didn’t know him so well, he likely wouldn’t have known what to look for. However, he does, so he instantly knows that it was the wrong thing to say.

“Th—that’s not what I mean, Yance,” he stutters out quickly. “I’m sure you can fix it, and besides you’re working extra hours now, so it’s not like it’ll be that big of a deal—”

“The extra hours are pretty much to pay for the hospital,” Yancy says back, something in his voice causing the cold weight to sprout branches and reach back up into Raleigh’s chest, closing around his lungs and throat. “I had to transfer money from savings in order to get us back in the positive. And my paycheck coming this week is gonna be smaller than usual, so I’ll probably have to do it again when bills come and I—I just—I don’t—” Yancy’s voice cracks, and Raleigh realizes with a pang that there are tears leaking from underneath his brother’s arm. “It’s gonna take almost everything we have in savings not to have another check bounce this month, Rals.”

He feels like he’s choking, like cold fingers are clamped down in his windpipe, holding it closed, and he wants to scream in frustration because he doesn’t know how to help his brother, doesn’t know what to _say_ , because he knows how Yancy feels about him getting a job and that’s really the only thing he can think to offer at this point. They’ve discussed such a possibility before, when Raleigh’d tried to do it behind Yancy’s back a few months ago; it hadn’t ended well, to say the least. So he stays silent, heart nearly breaking in half when Yancy actually lets out a small whimper accompanied by a hitch in his breathing.

“I don’t know what to do, Rals,” the older Becket finally admits, dropping his arm and looking up at Raleigh full in the face. His eyes are red and tear-rimmed, pools of moisture still gathered within their familiar depths. “I’m so _scared_ , kid. I… I don’t know how to get us through this.”

Raleigh swallows the pressure in his throat before he speaks.

“It’ll be okay, Yance,” he whispers, resuming the motions of his hand briefly before stopping over his brother’s heartbeat, bearing down slightly so that the other blond knows he’s here. “We’ll make it. We have each other, right?”

Almost immediately, Yancy’s hand descends over his own. “Of course, Rals,” he murmurs tearfully, sniffling before he continues, “and don’t you ever doubt that.”

“I don’t,” Raleigh smiles down at him, maybe not entirely feeling the expression but doing it for his brother’s sake nonetheless, “and, so, don’t worry, okay?” He moves his arm so that his hand is on Yancy’s cheek, upside down, fingers trailing over the curve of his jaw. “We don’t need anything more than that.”

If Raleigh listens to his own words as they fade into the room, he can almost believe it, himself.

 

 

Yancy’s new schedule means that he goes to work at the same time, but that he doesn’t get home until it’s nearly eleven at night. Which means that Raleigh has a lot of time to spend on his own.

And, like any horny teen-aged boy, this means that he’s going to eventually spend it doing several very specific activities. Or, rather, _one_ specific activity.

That’s not to say that he spends the entire day making love to his hand. On the contrary, the first thing he does when he wakes up is make breakfast for Yancy while his older brother is in the shower. Nothing fancy, obviously: just some eggs, bacon that he heats up in the microwave, and toast; that way, he can do all three at once and save time. By the third morning, he’s gotten pretty good at the timing. Now, the seventh day since his hospital stay, he’s nearly got it down to a science.

After that’s done and he gives Yancy a hug and receives a kiss on the forehead for his trouble, he goes back up to his room and sleeps for several hours more. Then, at some point around noon, he crawls out of bed, showers, and makes himself something small—most days it’s cereal or something of the like. After that, he reads for an hour or two, working slowly through more of Dick’s short stories—Raleigh rather enjoys how they always keep him guessing—and in general lounging about. Afterward, he usually feels somewhat restless, so he puts on shorts and a t-shirt and goes for a run because, hey, it’s sixty degrees out and he’s going to enjoy the warmth while he can, recent illness be damned. Truthfully, though, Raleigh runs for several reasons aside from the weather. The main one being that, since they no longer own a car and he’s not exactly willing to ask anyone he knows for a ride home, he has no way to get home from practices for a sports team of some kind aside from walking. That is, of course, assuming he even wanted to be a part of a team anymore.

He’d used to want to play lacrosse like Yancy had. Apparently, the coach still talked about his older brother with something approaching awe, according to one of his acquaintance-friends on the team, had said Yancy probably could’ve gone pro if he wanted to, or at the very least could’ve gotten a scholarship. So, since he can’t do that, Raleigh has instead taken up running. He usually goes for a run after he gets home from school, burning off the stress of the day before heading home and grabbing a shower before Yancy returns. He’s not exactly self-conscious about his body, but, at the same time, he’s always been somewhat jealous of the physical condition Yancy’d gotten into during his lacrosse days, and so he strives to achieve something similar—or at least something comparable.

He also runs because, if he sits still for too long, he starts to go stir-crazy. He sometimes finds himself wondering if it’s related to the fact that he’s always been a light sleeper, always had to be doing something, as opposed to Yancy who seems to be much more calm, can sit comfortably in silence almost indefinitely whereas Raleigh has to have something to do with his hands.

And, of course, the final reason is that running itself seems to not only burn off his energy, but turn it into something more positive and light-hearted that he can channel into other things.

More to the point, in the last few months, running has ended up making him incredibly horny by the time he gets home. His best guess as to why is the fact that he’s now living in close proximity with Yancy at all times, so his levels of sexual frustration have skyrocketed, especially since, not only are they in close proximity all the time, but they’re constantly _touching_. Raleigh knows— _appreciates_ , even—their increase in tactile affection. After their mom’s death and father’s departure, Raleigh’s pretty sure that the only reason he hasn’t completely lost his mind is because he and Yancy are always constantly reminding each other that they’re here, that they’re real and they’re _together_ and they have each other. But, at the same time, it’s done nothing constructive for Raleigh’s ever-growing feelings for his brother.

In the beginning, back when he was twelve, the idea of having sex with Yancy hadn’t even entered his mind. At that point, he had been more attracted to Yancy as a person: his personality, his humor, his biting sarcasm, the way he would force the world to bend back on its own head for the things he cared about. Then, when he’d discovered masturbation at the tender age of thirteen—and, in his defense, he’d had more important things going on his life—he would get off to images of Yancy doing things like _kissing_ him or just _holding_ him and whispering how much he loved him in his ear. Lately, though, his fantasies have definitely turned more sexual in nature. When he comes, it’s with an image of Yancy hovering over him, naked, body shining with sweat, hard shaft buried deep inside Raleigh’s body as they rock together, lips connected by a line of spit as Yancy leans back from ravishing his mouth to get a better angle and—

Raleigh comes, his mind whiting out except for his imaginings of Yancy’s blissed-out face, the first few shots arcing up and painting his chest and tensed stomach, the rest spilling out over his hand in a lazy dribble.

He lies there, panting, heart beat slowing, face heating as he remembers what he’d been fantasizing about just before he’d come. He reaches over with his free hand to turn off the porn he’s got pulled up on the computer and then scoots off the bed—truthfully, he barely pays attention to it, just uses it to fuel his imagination for situations involving himself and his brother. He hobbles down the hallway, naked, hand still wrapped around his softening dick to try and contain the mess, and curses when he gets to the bathroom and sees that he’d come in his belly button. Deciding to forgo wiping himself down, he turns the shower on and steps under the warm spray, letting it carry the evidence of his desire down the drain. Getting semen out of one’s belly button was difficult enough in a shower; Raleigh didn’t even want to attempt it with tissues or something of the like.

Once he considers himself clean enough, he dries himself, gets dressed, and decides that, to hell with it, he might as well do some summer reading. This summer, it’s Mary Shelley’s _Frankenstein_ (he’s finally reading it for himself) and a novel titled _The Things They Carried_ that piques Raleigh’s history-obsessed side.

He detours downstairs to the kitchen, grabs a few butterscotch hard candies and unwraps one to pop it in his mouth before heading upstairs again. Yancy always buys him some kind of hard candy when they’re at the store, likely because he knows Raleigh’s addicted to the damn things, especially when he’s reading. He roots around in his book bag, trying to locate the two novels, and, once successful, curls up on his bed to read.

 

 

On a normal evening, Yancy is home around ten fifty. More often than not, it’ll be ten fifty three or ten fifty four. Raleigh usually has something made for dinner for them both by then, usually something simple that’s difficult to destroy like spaghetti he’s boiled and sauce and cheese from a can, chicken nuggets, or sausage with beans and rice. Tonight, though, Raleigh wants to do something different, something to celebrate the fact that Yancy’s been pulling his extra shifts for a week now. He pulls out a frozen bag of pre-cooked meatballs they have and pours the sauce into a pan on the stove this time, using it to heat the meatballs. He follows the directions on the package, heating the mixture at a simmering boil for as long as it says, and then turns the heat down to keep it warm and sets out plates and starts the spaghetti. Some part of his mind berates him, telling him that _meatballs_ with spaghetti don’t make it suddenly special, but he tells that part of his mind to shut up because, really, he knows Yancy will appreciate the gesture for what it is.

By the time ten fifty rolls around, Raleigh has everything ready. He sits at the table, waiting for his brother to arrive.

 

 

Eleven o’clock ticks past on the stove clock. Raleigh pulls out his phone to make sure it’s accurate, and, upon confirmation, flips his phone open to make sure he hasn’t missed any messages or calls. There’s nothing. He sighs unhappily, but rationalizes that his brother’s carpool probably is just running late for some reason. Traffic, probably.

 

 

At eleven fifteen, Raleigh fires off a quick text to his brother, asking him if his carpool’s in trouble and when does he think he’ll get home? He puts the sauce and meatballs back on the stove on the lowest heat possible, trying to keep them warm for when Yancy eventually arrives. By now, he’s constantly staring at his phone, watching as the minutes tick by, fingers drumming over the linoleum in a senseless rhythm as he silently urges the device to ring.

 

 

At eleven thirty, Raleigh calls. The phone rings for the obligatory thirty seconds before going to voicemail.

“Hey Yance,” Raleigh says into the microphone, voice cracking slightly from disuse, “it’s me. It’s eleven thirty and you aren’t home yet. Getting kind of worried, man. Text me or give me a call when you get this, ‘kay bro?”

As soon as he flips the device shut, he’s flipping it open again to try calling again. Just as before, it rings for thirty seconds and then goes to voicemail. He grinds his teeth in frustration, hangs up before the electronic voice can tell him he’s reached Yancy’s number and tries again.

“C’mon, Yance, c’mon…” he whispers, stomach sinking with each ring and finally falling into his feet when he gets the voicemail again. He doesn’t bother leaving another message.

Numbly, Raleigh stands and pulls out Tupperware, packaging up the food he’d made and putting it in the fridge. No use in it all going to waste while he waits, he figures. He can reheat it later.

Then, he sits down at the table, stares at his phone for a good thirty seconds, and tries Yancy’s number again.

 

 

At twelve thirty, Yancy’s phone starts going immediately to voicemail. Some harsh, cynical part of his mind whispers that he’s probably called so much that he’s worn out the other phone’s battery.

Raleigh doesn’t stop trying to call.

 

 

The sound of a door closing upstairs startles him awake, and he sits up, groaning at the stiffness in his neck. At some point, Raleigh’d laid his head down on the table, telling himself it was just for a moment, he was just doing it so that he could continue calling Yancy without the added weight of his own body.

He blinks at the slanted light streaming in through the windows, rubs at his eyes to dislodge the sleep still crusted at the corners, and glances over at the clock as he stretches and yawns.

It’s six thirty in the morning.

The shower starts upstairs, and Raleigh is suddenly bolt upright, nearly knocking over his chair in his haste to get to his brother. He wobbles on his legs, his back protesting the sudden change, but he ignores it as he sprints the short distance towards the stairs, using the banister at the bottom as a fulcrum to swing himself around and propel himself up. However, he makes it to the fourth step when he steps on something that destabilizes him and he has to grip the handrail desperately to keep from pitching backwards. Breathing heavily, heart pounding, he looks around wildly, trying to find what it is that tripped him.

His eyes widen when he realizes that it’s Yancy’s wallet.

Curious, he reaches out and picks it up, surprised at the accessory’s weight and thickness. So, never one to leave a question unanswered, of course he flips it open.

And a bound up wad of bills falls from inside and onto the stairs. Raleigh stares at the fallen, rubber-band-bound bundle before he picks it up in shaking fingers, flipping through. It’s all fifties and twenties. Doing a quick estimate, he guesses there’s somewhere between five and eight hundred dollars in the wad.

Raleigh’s mind blanks for a moment, and the money drops to the stairs along with his brother’s wallet as he tries to somehow process this new information, to justify it and collate it and force it to make some kind of sense.

What the fuck did Yancy _do_ last night?

Before he can even think about it, he’s pounding on the door to the bathroom, anger singing in his veins.

“Yancy,” he shouts through the door, “where _were_ you?”

He listens for a moment, and, when he doesn’t get a response, he knocks again, door shaking in its frame.

“Yancy! Answer me, damn it!”

“Go away, Rals.”

The words are so soft—practically a groan—that Raleigh almost misses them over the sound of his own fists against the wood and the shower still running, but they’re definitely there. The anger coalesces into a single mass in his chest, burning through him.

“I don’t fucking think so. I waited up for you all night, Yance. I called you _at least_ three, four _dozen_ times. Where the _fuck_ were you?”

“I said, _go away_.”

Something in Yancy’s tone makes Raleigh go suddenly still, and he considers the door in front of him. The two of them had long ago decided that, by unspoken agreement, a closed door was to be considered locked and not entered unless permission was given. However, something in Raleigh was telling him—was _screaming_ at him—that his brother needed him now, more even than when their mother had died.

So, throwing caution to the wind, Raleigh takes a stabilizing breath and turns the knob.

“I said, _go away, Raleigh_.” Yancy yells at him from behind the shower curtain, but Raleigh isn’t listening. Instead his gaze is trapped on his brother’s clothing, strewn across the floor of the hazy, humid room. Specifically, it it’s caught on his pants, underwear still trapped within, indicating the other teen had practically torn them off in his haste to remove them.

There is a discolored, wet patch in the seat of the pants.

Not the front.

The seat.

Raleigh knows what that wet patch is. Can practically _smell_ it from over here.

His gorge rises, and the younger blond has to look away for a moment, gulping down desperate lungfuls of air as he tries to not give in to the panic creeping up the back of his spine.

“Oh my god,” Raleigh breathes. “Yancy… Yancy, please tell me you didn’t…”

His reaches out towards the shower curtain with shaking fingers and slowly, almost uncertainly, pushes it back.

Yancy is hunched in the corner, huddled under the spray, knees underneath him as the water cascades down his bare back.

His shoulders are shaking in silent sobs.

There are no marks that Raleigh can see, but the way he’s holding himself gingerly up off the floor is telling enough for the younger Becket.

“Yancy…” he starts, stepping into the tiled space, spray hitting his shoulder and drenching his t-shirt.

“Please, Raleigh,” Yancy moans quietly, sobbing harder, voice catching, “please j-just… please don’t look at me. Just go. Go back to your summer reading and just leave me alone.”

Anger pulses through Raleigh at the words, and he halts, halfway to his brother.

“No.”

Yancy’s breath catches, and he turns his head slightly. Raleigh can see one of his eyes, wide and red-rimmed and looking at him as if he’s seeing him for the first time, and it takes everything the younger Becket has not to just enfold his brother in his arms. Instead, he stands there in the burning spray, feeling it practically blister his skin through his clothing—he wonders idly why Yancy’s skin isn’t a bright cherry pink if he’s been in here for so long already—and lets the anger grow, feeding on his swirling thoughts.

“Not if this is what you’re going to do. I won’t, Yance.”

“What do you care?” Yancy fires back, words still garbled by tears that are washed away as soon as they appear. “Why should it matter what I do to pay the bills, huh? I did this _for_ you, so that you can _have_ a future. So that you don’t end up like _this_.”

Raleigh sees red, and his mouth starts shaping words before he can even think about them.

“Yeah, well, I never asked you to do this, Yance. I never _wanted_ this. And, honestly, I don’t _want_ a future if you’re going to resort to whoring yourself out to get—”

It happens so fast that Raleigh’s not entirely sure he didn’t imagine it. One second he’s raging, _fuming_ at Yancy’s slumped-over form, the next his brother’s entire body stiffens, and then everything’s a blur and Raleigh feels his head and back collide hard with the far wall, his brother pinning him there. A wet forearm is pressed just above his chest, cutting off his air and soaking through his shirt, the muscles in it bunched and unyielding as if they were made of metal; idly, Raleigh’s aware that Yancy’s naked body is dripping on the tile at the younger blond’s feet. For a moment, as he’s gasping for air, he’s sure he must be hallucinating—after all, the way his brother’s eyes look like they’re glowing bright blue, pupils stretching until they cut down the center of both irises, is _impossible_.

“Of course you didn’t ask!” Yancy _snarls_ in his face. “You never ask! I just give it to you! I give and I give and I give until I’ve given _everything I have_ and I don’t even expect you to give me anything back because that’s all I’ve ever done! My entire fucking life has been ‘take care of Raleigh’ from the fucking moment Mom walked in the door with you in her arms! Do you not get that?”

There’s a hitch in his brother’s words, and the steel bar of muscle against Raleigh’s chest abates slightly. He sucks in a desperate breath and blinks rapidly, his hallucinations vanishing as he does.

“ _That’s all I’m good for!_ ” Yancy continues, voice cracking. “Everything I am is summed up in those four fucking words and—and if I can’t do that, then what the fuck am I good for?” His brother’s eyes are pleading now, as if he’s desperate for Raleigh to understand, his anger quickly giving way to something the younger Becket doesn’t— _can’t_ —let himself think about.

“I _need_ to be able to do this, Rals,” he whimpers, “I _need_ to take care of you however I can because you’re… you’re _it_ , don’t you get that? If you fail because I didn’t try hard enough, didn’t do what _had to be done_ , then I’m a failure. I can’t let you become me, kid, I just…” his voice catches as he sucks in a shuddery breath, “I _can’t_. I can’t. You could be so much more, could _do_ so much more—could have anything you wanted in the whole wide world. And I just… I want…”

Yancy sags against Raleigh’s chest, and Raleigh pulls his brother in, not able to find the words to answer.

“I just—I want—I want to keep you from becoming me,” Yancy whispers against his chest, sobs ripping their way out of his body. Raleigh finds his legs buckling, and they slide down against the wall together until Yancy is essentially lying in his lap, clutching at the damp fabric of his shirt as he whispers a constant stream of words underneath his whimpering.

“Yance,” he whispers back, stroking his brother’s damp hair as best as he can at the angle, “it’s okay. I’m sorry for getting angry. Just… I don’t want you to do this kind of thing, okay? It’s not worth it for me. I was serious: I don’t want the kind of future you want me to have if this is what you have to do for me to get it. Okay?” He gently grips Yancy’s chin and leans over, forcing his brother to look him in the eye as his other hand traces a soothing pattern over the other blond’s scalp.

“There’s only one thing I want in this world,” Raleigh says eventually, once he’s sure his brother’s attention is fully on him, “and I know I can’t have it. But that’s okay. Because I just want _you_ , and for you to be happy. And if I can’t have you the way I really want, well, I’ll settle for whatever I can get.”

He places a kiss on Yancy’s forehead before finishing, “I love you, Yance. And, so long as I’m with you, I’ll be happy. So, as long as you stick around, you haven’t failed. Okay?”

The older Becket doesn’t answer with words, just nods and rearranges himself so he can wrap his arms around Raleigh’s middle. He buries his face in Raleigh’s chest and holds on so tightly that Raleigh thinks maybe his brother—his calm, ever-confident brother—is holding on for dear life, sobs fading until he’s simply making soft noises of distress into the younger Becket’s shoulder.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In short, Yancy, in a fit of desperation, had sex with some guys for money. Raleigh finds him sobbing in the shower, they have a bit of a confrontation about it (Raleigh says he doesn't care about having a future if Yancy has to do this in order to make sure he has one, and Yancy fires back that Raleigh's future is the most important thing, the way he measures his success as a person. Raleigh fires back, "Well, I never asked for this." and Yancy pins him to the wall and shouts that of course Raleigh never asked he never had to ask Yancy just gives him everything he has because that's what Yancy does). Though it was consensual, Yancy is obviously upset that it happened.


	3. finding solid ground

They keep the money, although Raleigh wants to throw it out; he feels sick every time he thinks about it. Yancy argues with him that it’s too potentially useful to just toss, but he does agree when Raleigh demands he not use it unless there is literally no other option. He also agrees to Raleigh’s demand that he no longer work evening shifts, and, instead, picks up a shift on Saturdays. When he objects at first, Raleigh snaps and tells him that he doesn’t care if Yancy has to work every goddamned day of the week, he will be working another evening shift over Raleigh’s dead body. Raleigh holds back the fact that he’d rather drop out of school and get his own job than go through any of that again.

They burn the clothes. Yancy doesn’t object to that.

 

 

_The clouds are cold as he moves through their blinding depths, ice shards cutting at his skin only to melt a moment later, making him wince and shiver. His companion is there with him, the green and blue dragon, only, it’s no longer blue and green. Shielded from the sun, Raleigh can finally see that it’s actually—_

 

 

Raleigh is awakened from his dream by the sound of whimpering.

It’s been a day since Yancy had… sold himself (even the thought of it makes rage curl in Raleigh’s belly) and, the night previous, he’d told Raleigh that he didn’t think he was okay for them to sleep in the same bed. Raleigh had respected his brother’s wish immediately, especially when Yancy added that he still wanted to be in the same room as him.

“I sleep better that way,” was all he’d said by way of explanation, and Raleigh’d accepted it without thought.

That night, Yancy’d had nightmares. Raleigh had done nothing, though, wanting to respect his brother’s space, and hating the men who’d _dared_ to lay a hand on his brother’s body more and more as the night wore on. By the end of it, he’d barely slept, instead consumed with thoughts of how, if he ever found those sick bastards, he was going to gleefully rip them limb from limb. However, it wasn’t until Yancy started getting ready for work that it became evident that the older Becket hadn’t fared any better despite actually falling asleep, from the way he nearly fell down the stairs, to the way he tried to eat the eggs Raleigh made for him with a spoon. As soon as these facts all lined up, Raleigh vowed to do something about it.

Which is why, this time, when Yancy’s cries wake him from the light, worried sleep he’d managed to fall into, Raleigh doesn’t stay in bed. He doesn’t sit there helplessly, hoping it will get better. Instead, he throws off his covers as quietly as possible, pads across the carpet, and slides underneath the sheets beside his brother as gently as he can. This close, Raleigh can see the way Yancy’s face is twisted—whether in terror or disgust he doesn’t know, though the sounds his brother is making suggest the former—and the way his eyes dart back and forth beneath his eyelids.

The second his arms wrap around Yancy, the older blond quiets significantly. Raleigh takes in the beads of sweat that dot his brother’s face, the tremors that wrack his body even in REM sleep, and the way his legs twitch upwards every now and then as his shoulders hunch inward, as if he’s trying to curl in on himself. In answer, he places a soft kiss on Yancy’s cheek while tightening his hold, as if he can somehow push the nightmare out of the man in his arms.

“It’s okay, Yance,” he whispers into the shell of his brother’s ear, nose tracing the other blond’s hairline, “I’m right here. I’ve got you. You’re safe, big brother. I love you.”

 

 

Though it takes him some time, a lot of gentle rubbing, and no small amount of soft promises, Yancy eventually quiets in Raleigh’s arms. His older brother’s soft snores fill the room, and Raleigh can’t help the smile that stretches his face in the darkness, nuzzling into the other man’s neck as he allows the sleep that’d been floating at the edges of his vision to finally swoop down and claim him.

 

 

Raleigh had planned to wake up when his alarm went off and, while his brother was slowly climbing towards consciousness, sneak back into his own bed, Yancy none the wiser.

However, when he wakes, his alarm blaring loudly, it’s to find that Yancy has rolled them over and has Raleigh’s shoulders wrapped tightly in his arms. Panic floods the younger Becket’s veins as he tries to determine a solution to the situation in which he finds himself. On one hand, if he tries to get away, Yancy will almost certainly feel it and wake up. On the other hand, if he stays here, his alarm will eventually annoy his brother awake. Either way, his brother will likely know that he’d snuck into his bed.

As Raleigh is lying there, pondering what to do, the decision is made for him when Yancy’s entire body tenses at his back, and he hears a sleepy, confused, “Rals?” murmured into his neck. Slowly, Raleigh turns himself around so that he’s face to face with his brother—his now definitely awake brother—and looks him right in the eye, trying to smile.

“Hey Yance.”

Yancy’s brows scrunch together, and his eyes narrow, gaze not quite on Raleigh but somewhere just behind him, a gesture Raleigh recognizes as Yancy trying to remember something.

“What… why are you in my bed?”

The question isn’t angry, mostly curious. After all, Raleigh muses, in the past, when they’ve asked something of one another, they’ve almost always complied. Raleigh especially knows he’s guilty of sometimes doing as Yancy says without even asking a reason—it’d gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion when they were younger—so he understands why his brother _doesn’t_ understand.

“You were having nightmares,” he explains softly, reaching a hand up between their bodies to rest it against Yancy’s cheek. “Me sleeping beside you seemed to help. I’m sorry, if you still don’t want me to, I can—”

“No,” Yancy cuts him off, palm resting over top the hand Raleigh has on the older Becket’s face, eyes just this side of pleading, “no, Rals. It’s… I wanted to be in the same room as you because the—” his brother gags on his words for a second, swallowing before he continues, “the thought of being without you was just… it was _unbearable_ , but I didn’t want to… I _couldn’t_ … I didn’t want to ruin you.”

Raleigh wants so badly to kiss his brother, to tell him that there is nothing that Yancy could _ever_ do to ruin him, that he _loves_ him and even if he _could_ be ruined by Yancy’s presence he wouldn’t _care_. Instead, all he says is, “It’s okay, Yance. _I’m_ okay. I want to be able to help you. I want _this_ , alright?” He finishes by lightly curling his fingers against the skin of Yancy’s face, applying the slightest of pressures.

Yancy’s eyes, which had been slowly glimmering more and more sharply with unshed tears, overflow as he nods.

“Yeah, okay.”

When Yancy bends his head forward and rests his forehead on Raleigh’s collarbone, it isn’t okay. It isn’t alright. It’s the furthest thing from either of those.

But it’s what Raleigh has. It’s what they both have. And he knows they can make it through this together.

 

 

The next day, while Yancy’s out at work, Raleigh pushes their beds together. He also finds a foam pad—a spare from the Tempur-Pedic their mom had requested for the days she was bedridden—hidden on the top shelf of the linen closet. He lays it out over their now-joined beds so that the crease between the mattresses isn’t so uncomfortable.

When his brother gets home and sees the new sleeping arrangements, he casts a soft, hopeful smile in Raleigh’s direction that draws a similar one onto the younger Becket’s face.

“I told you,” Raleigh says softly, “you can’t ruin me, Yance. If being closer to me helps you sleep, makes you feel better, then it’s fine. Besides, like I said,” he looks down, face flaming, “I want to. I…” his voice drops to a near-whisper, “I like it.”

The recrimination, the reminder of ‘ _I can’t_ ’ that he’s expecting from his brother never comes. Instead, Yancy wraps him in a firm hug, leans down, and whispers in his ear, “Thank you, Rals.”

 

 

Once Raleigh begins tenth grade, they settle into a new rhythm. Yancy walks Raleigh to the bus stop, then goes back to the house to wait for his carpool to go to work. Most days, Raleigh has to beg off invitations from people to hang out after school because, for some reason, everyone at school seems to think he’s interesting or some shit like that because it’s just him and his brother so _clearly_ they’re just the coolest kids around. Once he gets home from school, though, he does his homework until Yancy calls and says he’s on his way home, always finishing the call with, “See you soon, kiddo.” After that, Raleigh sets about preparing something for dinner, trying to time it so that whatever he makes will be ready by the time Yancy walks in the door; it’s still almost never anything fancy, more often than not reheated leftovers from another day or some recipe Raleigh’s looked up earlier that he wants to try—and that they can afford with their increasingly limited budget.

They eat dinner together. They rest together. Raleigh usually finishes his homework for the day while Yancy watches TV or checks his email or reads. Afterward, some time around ten thirty or eleven, one of them—usually Yancy—will say that they’re tired, and the two of them will wander up to bed, quickly change into sleep clothes, and then crawl into bed and curl around each other in a tangle of limbs. Nowadays, that’s Raleigh’s favorite part of the day, because the last thing he hears before he drifts off is always his brother’s sure, steady heartbeat.

 

 

For Yancy’s nineteenth birthday, Raleigh tries—yet again—to get a job behind his brother’s back so that he can get Yancy something nice.

His brother finds his résumé on the computer, and, after enduring Yancy’s glaring in his direction for a solid twenty minutes, Raleigh relents, quailing under the older teen’s gaze.

“I just wanted your birthday to be special for once,” he grumbles quietly, looking down to paw at the carpet with his socked foot. He isn’t expecting the arms around his shoulders, or the kiss that’s pressed to his forehead as Yancy breathes, “So long as I have you, kiddo, it’s plenty special enough.”

 

 

When, a week before his sixteenth birthday, Yancy asks Raleigh what he wants as a present, Raleigh doesn’t tell him anything at first. Instead, he first answers loftily that, like Yancy, he doesn’t _need_ any presents, that having his brother in his life is plenty enough. However, when the day itself rolls around, he has a sudden thought as his brother walks in the front door from work and Raleigh wraps him in the firm hug that’s become yet another in their list of new traditions. Once it’s there, though, the thought won’t stop rattling around his brain, and, over dinner, it just spills out.

“I want a kiss.”

His brother’s fork, halfway to his mouth, freezes, the older Becket’s eyes flying up to meet Raleigh’s. After a moment of tense silence, Yancy eventually breathes out a soft, “What?”

“For my birthday,” Raleigh clarifies, his own hands shaking beneath the table where he’s clasped them together, out of sight. Somehow, he manages to keep his eyes fixed on his brother as he continues speaking. “I want a kiss. A real one.”

The wheels behind Yancy’s eyes are turning, Raleigh can see them, and he’s unsurprised when his brother’s voice comes out even, measured.

“Well, I mean, I guess we can always see if we can find someone who’ll—”

“I want it to be you,” Raleigh interrupts him, hoping his words sound far more confident than he’s feeling. Across the table, Yancy’s jaw clenches, the older teen sighing through his nose.

“Rals, I… I don’t think that’s such a good—”

“You’ve already kissed me. When I was sick.”

Raleigh’s still not convinced that the memory wasn’t some imagining of his fevered mind, so it had been a shot in the dark, but it seems to strike home when Yancy’s face goes unnaturally pale and he actually drops his fork with a clatter. The look on his brother’s face is, in a word, horrified. As soon as Raleigh sees the denial blossoming to life on the other teen’s lips, he cuts him off with a raised hand.

“Don’t, Yance. _Please_ don’t say it.”

His brother, however, seems to ignore his words, because he charges on ahead anyway.

“Rals, you have to understand, I thought you were—”

“And _I don’t care_ ,” Raleigh bites back, a knot of irritation forming in his stomach. “I _liked_ it, Yance. Hell, I thought I was _dreaming_.”

Yancy gapes, mouth opening and closing several times, effectively silenced by Raleigh’s outburst—though whether at the words or the tone Raleigh’s taking, the younger blond doesn’t know—for a few moments before he whispers, “Do you dream about me kissing you a lot?”

The irritation morphs into a hot ball of anger, and Raleigh’s eyes roll of their own accord.

“No, Yance, not often _at all_. Only just about every night since I was _twelve_.”

The words, like many words Raleigh says, seem to strike his brother in a way he hadn’t intended, because Yancy shuts his eyes and looks down.

“So, when you told me… when you told me how you felt—”

“That I thought I was in love you,” Raleigh interjects. Yancy nods before continuing.

“When you told me about that, you,” he takes a breath, “you meant it. It wasn’t just some teenaged crush—you still… you still feel like that?”

“No,” Raleigh says, anger fading abruptly at the way his brother’s eyes snap up to meet his, gaze almost desperate, at the single word. He counts three of his too-quick heartbeats, suddenly pounding in his ears, and marshals his courage before adding, “I used to think I was in love with you. Now I _know_ I am.”

Yancy makes a high, keening sound in the back of his throat, almost like a wounded animal.

“Rals, I shouldn’t—you don’t understand, I—I _can’t_ , I just—there are things you don’t understand and I—I’m your _brother_. I _shouldn’t_ —” he makes a choked sound, gaze flickering down, then up, and finally back down; Raleigh tracks the tears that leak out from both eyes when the older teen blinks forcefully, “I _shouldn’t feel this way_ about you. I _can’t_.”

Raleigh takes a breath before he stands, walking around the table and kneeling once he’s level with his brother. Yancy looks away, clearly refusing to meet his eyes.

“Yancy,” he breathes softly, wanting so badly to reach out, place a hand on his brother’s arm, his shoulder, his leg— _something_ —and shake him out of it, but he doesn’t dare, “look at me. Please.”

The older Becket doesn’t comply for a few seconds, but when he does, the motion is stiff, halting. When their eyes meet, though, it takes everything Raleigh has to not reach out to his brother; however, something at the back of his mind reiterates—even more loudly now—that such an action would be a _very_ bad idea. He refuses to force Yancy into anything or make the other teen feel like he _has_ to do something, no matter how much Raleigh himself might want it. He does have _some_ morals, after all. So, instead, he takes a deep breath, holds it for a second, and exhales noisily before he speaks.

“I know that I don’t know everything about all this,” he says, trying to keep his voice even. “But I know, also, that I want you more than I’ve wanted anyone else in my life. Hell, Yance, you’re the _only_ person I’ve ever wanted. For almost _four years_ now. And I don’t care that we’re brothers—I really don’t—because I trust you more than anyone else on this fucking planet and I literally cannot imagine myself being with anyone else. I don’t _care_ if other people don’t like it, if they say it’s wrong or abnormal or whatever. They don’t know what our lives have been like. They don’t _know_. So fuck them. Fuck them all, I don’t care what they think, whether it’s ‘normal’ or not—normal can go fuck itself. All that matters to me,” he closes his eyes as he clasps his hands tightly in front of him, the urge to reach out now practically screaming as it bounces around his skull, “all that has _ever_ mattered to me, all that _will_ ever matter to me, is _you_. Only you, Yance.”

The only warning he has is a soft, whispered, “Fuck it,” that he’s almost halfway sure he imagines, and then Yancy’s lips are on his.

Raleigh had wanted to have at least this one kiss, this one moment, to remember and cherish when his brother ultimately rejects him flat-out. He’d wanted some small taste of reality to throw into the fantasy, to maybe give him something to cling to when the bed that, he knew, would one day be bereft of his brother’s presence feels just that much colder.

But, suddenly, it occurs to him what a terrible, _horrible_ idea this is.

Because, now, Raleigh’s not so sure he can live without this.

The feeling of Yancy kissing him is transcendent. There are sparks exploding through his entire body. It’s like everything in the world has narrowed down to the press of dry skin against dry skin, his eyes slipping closed of their own accord, and nothing else could possibly matter. He can _feel_ his brother’s emotions pouring into him, filling him up, knows his own hands have lifted to fist desperately at Yancy’s shirt because he needs _more_ contact _right fucking now_ , needs to be swallowed up by his brother until nothing is left but _them_ and oh _god_ how did he ever think he could never do this again?

He lets out a groan behind his lips, breathing heavily through his nose. Then Yancy’s mouth opens slightly against his, tongue sweeping over the chapped flesh, and Raleigh takes in a surprised breath through his mouth.

When Yancy’s tongue dives in to twist around Raleigh’s, the younger Becket stops breathing. A desperate sound works its way out of his throat as the contact between them increases. This is everything he’s ever hoped for, everything he’s ever _dreamed_ , every fantasy he’s ever had about this moment all rolled into one and yet it feels _so much better than that_ because this is _Yancy_ kissing him, not some facsimile of his imagination and this is _real_ and—

And when Yancy wraps an arm around Raleigh’s waist to pull him forward, crushing their bodies together, Raleigh’s crotch brushes against a matching hardness in Yancy’s pants.

He practically _screams_ into the kiss, eyelids squeezing as white explodes behind them, all the air leaving his lungs as the world around him—sounds, smells, the growing ache in his knees—vanishes until the only thought occupying his mind is _Yancy, Yancy, Yancy_.

Raleigh comes down off his orgasm, shuddering, his brother’s arms still around him, so content that he can’t even feel ashamed about the fact that he just came in his pants from a _kiss_. He feels Yancy’s lips leave his own, and, even with his eyes still closed, he leans forward to try and recapture them. Instead, he finds a hand that moves to the side of his face, thumb rubbing over the arch of his cheekbone.

“Easy, there,” his brother whispers against his lips. “It’s alright, I gotcha. It’s okay, Rals.”

It’s only when he feels something cold rub across his cheek that he realizes he’s crying.

Raleigh cracks open his eyelids, vision swimming. He sniffles, and manages to pull a smile onto his face. Yancy’s features swirl into focus, and he’s _smiling_. Looking at Raleigh like he’s the most precious, beautiful thing in the world and Raleigh…

Raleigh doesn’t know what to do with that.

When Yancy catches sight of his opened eyes, he ducks his head slightly so that he’s looking up at his brother, peering into his eyes. There is no judgment in the gaze, only curiosity and a love so strong that it hits Raleigh in the gut like a physical blow, forcing the breath from his lungs. He’s had _dreams_ of Yancy looking at him like that.

“You alright, kiddo?” the older Becket asks, concern flashing across his face.

“I…” Raleigh tries, but his mouth fumbles around any further words. Instead, he just nods, pressing his lips together tightly in a watery smile before he manages to get out, “Thank you.”

The grin his brother sends him is his only warning before Yancy is slotting their mouths together again, and, _god_ , Raleigh hopes that this never fades, the way something so simple is making his knees quake even though he’s not even standing, is making a warm, bubbling sensation build up in his chest as his stomach feels like it’s doing back flips. Dimly, he’s aware of the congealing mess in his pants, but, compared to this, Yancy kissing him _voluntarily_ , here, now, it seems almost unimportant. However, as soon as it begins, the second kiss is over, though only long enough for Yancy to whisper, “Good. Because I think we’re gonna be doing that a lot more from now on,” before the third one begins. This one does not stay nearly as chaste as the second.

It makes Raleigh feel like he’s weightless, like the rest of the world is a distant, unimportant thing because this, right here, right now, is all that truly matters.

It feels like flying.

 

 

 


	4. alone together

_He emerges from the depths of the freezing clouds into the balmy evening sky, diving slightly and then banking, tracing an enormous loop in the sky, air flowing over him in rivers and streams. The moon hangs high above, providing faint illumination that bounces off of the reflective scales of the dragon that is now keeping to the opposite side of the loop from him._

_A_ silver _dragon, its scales almost perfect mirrors that sparkle and dance in the starlight._

_It does not chase him, simply stays resolutely nearby, its presence comforting in its familiarity. Glowing, vividly blue eyes track his progress, keeping pace with him as the two of them slowly spiral down towards the ground together._

 

 

The second half of his sophomore year passes Raleigh by in a blur.

Whatever it might’ve been that was holding Yancy back, Raleigh’s confession and the following kisses seem to have driven it from the older Becket’s mind. Or, at least, they’ve made it so that Yancy no longer cares. Either way, very little seems to change in their lives. After all, they still sleep in the same bed, still curl up together on the couch to read together, and still spend most of their free time together. It’s just that, now, they actually call what they’re doing cuddling—and, in fact, they do a lot more actual cuddling in bed—and there’s a lot more kissing involved. A _lot_ more.

Surprisingly, though, their everyday routine changes very little.

Every morning, Raleigh wakes up wrapped up in his brother somehow, though whether that means he’s holding Yancy, Yancy’s holding him, or they’re holding each other is seemingly up to random chance. Regardless, he always makes sure to take a moment to bask in the warmth, in the solid weight of his brother’s body. Then, with a kiss, he gets up to cook them breakfast. When they trade off between the kitchen and bathroom, they’ll usually meet each other halfway on the stairs for a brief press of lips and a smile. At his bus stop, Yancy will give Raleigh a kiss—on the lips if the bus isn’t yet in sight, on the cheek or forehead if it is—before heading back.

A few people on the bus have asked him what’s up with that, and a few others have even spread various rumors around the school. Raleigh ignores them, in part because they don’t even know the half of it, but also because he’d seen a girl not too long ago trying to convince the vice-principal that he should be taken away from his brother because, apparently, Yancy was ‘inappropriate’ with him; the older man had consequently laughed in her face and told her point-blank to mind her own business. After all, back when Raleigh had started applying for free lunches and other such programs almost two years ago, it had become an inevitability that the administration would find out about their parents’ collective absence. They’d had to make sure to wait to do any of that until after Yancy turned eighteen and had been working at his job for several months, just to make sure that, even though mildly disapproving looks might’ve been sent their way, there wasn’t anything anyone could actually do about it. Besides, the disapproval had almost unilaterally given way to understanding and sympathy, hence the incident with the vice principal.

Once he’s home, though, Raleigh will still cook something once Yancy texts to say that he’s on his way home, as per normal, but the two of them now share a kiss when his brother arrives home and takes his place at the table. Afterward, Yancy will typically do the dishes—unless Raleigh insists otherwise, as he often tries to—and Raleigh will finish up whatever homework he has left. After that, it’s like any other evening, except Yancy’s taken to asking Raleigh for massages about two or three times a week. Raleigh happily obliges these requests, though the sounds that Yancy makes as the younger blond works knots and kinks from his back are enough to give Raleigh a rather obvious problem. The first time happens, though, it actually ends up being a real problem.

That is to say, it leads to Yancy flipping the two of them over and him running his hands all over Raleigh’s body as the other Becket shivers and gasps into his brother’s mouth. When Yancy palms Raleigh’s hardness through his jeans, his other hand busy exploring the expanse of the teen’s stomach and running his nails teasingly over the skin, Raleigh arches into the touch, his mouth falling open as a wordless whimper leaves his lips and his face heats. The touch had sent pleasure—hot and electric—racing along his nerves, filling every corner of his being until he was so turned on that it almost _hurt_.

“Yancy,” he pants, fingers scrabbling for purchase and finding it in his brother’s hair, “Yancy _please_ , I need—” He doesn’t know what he was going to say after that, because he lets out a loud moan that his brother greedily swallows down.

“Aww, look at you, Rals,” Yancy whispers when he leans back, breath caressing Raleigh’s lips. “So needy for me, like a blushing virgin all over again…”

Raleigh’s eyes widen and the temperature in his face increases until he’s sure it’s going to spontaneously ignite. He can practically _feel_ the moment slip away as Yancy frowns down at his sudden change in demeanor.

“Rals…?”

Because he turns his head away, Raleigh doesn’t see Yancy’s reaction, but he can hear it just fine as the words are breathed onto his skin in an almost awed tone.

“ _Oh my god_ … Rals, had you ever—did you even _kiss_ anyone before?”

The embarrassed whimper that works its way from Raleigh’s throat makes the younger blond want to curl up and die, and he squeezes his eyes shut, eyebrows knitting together, as he whispers, “Never been anyone else I wanted to…”

He braces himself for the laughter, for his brother to mock him, to call him a hopeless romantic or ridiculous. What he does _not_ expect is for Yancy’s hands to find his cheek and chin, slowly moving his head back so that they’re facing each other once more. When Raleigh finally opens his eyes, it’s to see Yancy looking at him with something approaching awe, and—are those tears in his eyes?

“Rals, you,” his brother chokes on his words for a moment, “you _waited_ for _me_?”

Not trusting himself to speak, Raleigh nods slowly, not breaking their eye contact. He feels his brother shudder at the motion, a tremor running through the body that’s on top of him that shakes the tears free so that they fall on Raleigh’s face before being wiped away by his brother’s thumbs. Yancy opens his mouth several times, closes it, and then opens it again, only to think better of it once more. Eventually, he settles for leaning down and placing a soft, tender kiss against Raleigh’s lips that makes the younger blond’s guts turn into clouds, arms wrapping around the older man’s waist almost instinctively. It’s only when the other blond places another kiss, and then another, and then _another_ against his lips that Raleigh realizes his brother is speaking.

“Thank you,” he’s whispering. “Thank you, don’t deserve you, I don’t, I love you so much, so beautiful, so perfect—”

Which is the exact moment Raleigh’s heart completely melts, and he leans up to silence his brother with a kiss of his own.

And then, just like any other day, they fall asleep tangled in each other, limbs wrapped over and around and between them until Raleigh can’t tell where one of them ends and the other begins.

 

 

The day after Raleigh’s confession, he finds a piece of loose-leaf sticking out of his brother’s desk, the words “how to make Rals’ first time amazing” scrawled across the top in his brother’s sloppy, block letters. The list beneath it contains things ranging from massages to candlelit dinners (that particular entry has “money, stupid” written beside it, the first word underlined twice) to _flowers_ and a whole host of other options that make Raleigh blush even _thinking_ about them.

He, of course, being unable to really keep anything from Yancy, confronts his brother about it.

The denial quickly gives way when Raleigh says he’s not upset, that he thinks it’s sweet, and Yancy rubs the back of his neck nervously and says he wasn’t planning to do any of that for a while anyway because he wants to wait until Raleigh’s eighteen. For the obvious legal reasons.

“That’s fine, Yance,” Raleigh sighs happily, snuggling into the other man’s side. “I really don’t need all that if you don’t wanna do it yet. I mean, after all, the first thing I jerked off to was thinking about you kissing me, so…”

The short-lived embarrassment of the confession is totally worth it to see his brother turn that certain shade of pink.

 

 

Their life is not perfect by any means. They’re still living paycheck to paycheck, Yancy managing to save maybe a few dozen dollars every month once all is said and done. The older Becket still has nightmares sometimes, though, after talking it out with his brother, Raleigh now knows to wake the other blond whenever this is the case. Usually, then, they’ll fall asleep together once more, their heartbeats and breathing syncing as they fall into dreaming.

 

 

In early July, the middle of summer, Raleigh has a growth spurt. Or, more to the point, his growth spurt ends. In reality, it’d started sometime in March. However, all that truly matters is that, after four agonizing months of aches and joint pain and fumbling, awkward limbs and smacking himself in the face, Raleigh has grown from his former five-foot- three to a staggering six-foot-one. Throughout the whole process, when he’d complain that he didn’t want to get out of bed because his knees and his elbows and his ankles and his _everything_ hurt, Yancy would be there with comforting words and a soft touch. He refused to give Raleigh painkillers, though, telling the younger Becket that they might mess with his growth—a fact that Raleigh had contested hotly but, ultimately, conceded because, really, he didn’t actually know.

There were, of course, several comical moments. The first was likely when the whole process was just beginning, and Raleigh had rolled out of bed only to fall flat on his face as his feet touched the ground a split second before he’d expected them to and he lost his balance. The sound of him hitting the carpet had woken Yancy instantly, but, after a cursory look that had satisfied the older Becket that his brother wasn’t in any permanent way harmed, he’d laughed long and hard at the soft curses the younger blond was murmuring under his breath, the last of which was a “oh fuck off, Yance, you’re a horrible brother,” when the older Becket accused him of looking like a kicked puppy.

The second such incident involved Raleigh’s arms. He’d been waiting out for the bus when, abruptly, the bridge of his nose started itching. And, of course, when he reached up to scratch it, he’d ended up punching himself in the eye. Objectively, Raleigh knew it was funny, and he’d even laughed a little himself despite the fact that it _hurt_ , but had stopped dead at the look on his brother’s face a minute later. Because, apparently, he’d managed to give himself a black eye. It had resulted in several awkward conversations with the vice principals, though, since they’d known Yancy and Raleigh for several years now, it didn’t take much to convince them that it’d been an accident and that, no, his brother hadn’t even been involved at all.

However, in Raleigh’s mind, the greatest moment had been the one when Yancy had come downstairs for breakfast, placed a soft kiss on his brother’s cheek, and then done a double take.

“Are you _taller_ than me?”

Raleigh’d blinked, then looked down to confirm that neither he nor Yancy were wearing anything more than socks. Then looked back up at his brother. Or, more accurately, lifted his eyes to look _down_ at his brother.

“Uh, I,” Raleigh had stammered, “I guess so?”

The pout on Yancy’s face had put him in stitches for so long that he’d almost missed his bus.

Regardless, by early July, Raleigh’s waking up without a constant, dull throb running under every inch of his skin, and he’s finally starting to get _somewhat_ acquainted with his new limbs. At the very least, he doesn’t trip over his own feet with every other step like, as Yancy calls him, an overgrown puppy.

Unfortunately, this means that none of his old clothes fit anymore, a fact that Raleigh has been hiding from his brother for almost three weeks. However, on a Friday morning, just after Yancy has pulled away from their last kiss of the morning, his brows come together as his eyes rake over Raleigh’s body.

“Rals,” he says slowly, tone haltingly curious, “I thought this shirt was a medium?”

“Oh, uhm,” Raleigh ducks his head, “it is?”

The furrow between his brother’s brows deepens.

“Then why is it so tight on you? Did it shrink in the wash?”

Raleigh scuffs his feet against the floor, not looking up.

“Uhm, I don’t think so?”

“Well, then how do you explain,” Yancy runs his hand over Raleigh’s chest, the contact making the younger Becket shiver, “this? Not that I’m exactly complaining,” he adds quickly, a smirk evident in his voice, “‘cause I could get used to this view. It’s just… I actually thought this was supposed to be a sleep shirt since it was so big on you?”

“Uhm, yeah, it was,” Raleigh murmurs to his feet. He knows exactly when Yancy catches sight of the way the sweatpants he’s wearing—with the bottoms are hanging just above his ankles—because his brother sucks in a harsh breath.

“Rals, how many of your clothes actually still fit you?”

Face flaming, Raleigh manages to choke out a soft, “Just these.”

When Yancy speaks again, his voice is still soft, and so understanding it almost makes the younger blond cringe.

“Why didn’t you tell me, kiddo?”

Shame cuts through Raleigh, hot and bright. He mumbles something under his breath that not even he can understand despite even knowing what the words actually are.

“What was that?” Yancy asks softly, the hand on Raleigh’s chest rubbing a soothing circle over the younger Becket’s heart.

“I said, I didn’t wanna bother you with it. I mean,” he adds, slightly louder, “it’s not that big a deal, Yance. You don’t have to worry or—”

Raleigh is silenced by a finger on his lips, and suddenly Yancy is _right fucking there_ , leaning down so that he’s looking up at his brother, propping a finger under the younger Becket’s chin to force Raleigh’s eyes to meet his.

“Rals,” he murmurs, gray-blue eyes shining, “it’s fine, okay? It’s my _job_ to take care of you—more than that, I’m your _brother_ , I _love_ you, and I _want_ to take care of you, okay? But,” the skin around his eyes tightens incrementally, gaze hardening, “I can’t do that if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”

Raleigh simply nods, pushing his lips together as he tries to keep himself from visibly reacting. Yancy, however, must see some of the distress, the helplessness he’s feeling, because the older Becket is suddenly wide-eyed before he leans forward slightly, taking Raleigh’s head in his hands.

“No, listen to me, Rals,” he says, “it’s fine, okay. Needing clothes is _not_ a problem.”

“But clothes cost—” Raleigh starts, but his brother puts the finger back on his bottom lip, effectively cutting him off without actually forcing him to silence.

“Clothes cost what they cost, love,” Yancy breathes, making Raleigh shiver at the nickname. “And it doesn’t matter because your well-being is more important than anything else. Alright?”

His head pitching itself up and down, the younger Becket nods at his brother as his lips draw themselves into a pursed line. He wants to object, wants to say that it’s not a problem, _really_ , and that he _knows_ they barely have enough money to get by as it is. Instead, though, he remains silent in the face of the _look_ Yancy is giving him, because, really, Raleigh’s never been able to argue with that look. However, when it shifts to something expectant, the teen opens his mouth to let out a soft, “Yeah. Yeah, alright.”

Yancy’s smile still makes Raleigh’s stomach feel like it’s a bird-filled sky, and the following press of lips still gives him that weightless feeling of soaring above the world.

 

 

That weekend, an unfamiliar blue sedan pulls up in front of the house. Yancy, however, seems to recognize it—seems to have been _expecting_ it—because he ushers Raleigh out the door, waving at the woman behind the wheel through the windshield and smiling.

“Sit in the back,” Raleigh feels his brother’s words tickle at the shell of his ear. “Trust me.”

Instead of answering, Raleigh stiffens his spine and reaches for the door to the backseat, pulling it open and sliding into the air-freshener-embalmed interior. His eyes start to water immediately.

“Well hi there,” says the woman in the front seat, her shock of bright red curls bouncing as she shifts in her seat to look in Raleigh’s direction, thin lips stretching into a smile that’s somehow simultaneously friendly and shark-like. “You must be Yancy’s kid. Or, kid brother. Y’know. Whichever.”

Her accent is something Raleigh can’t place beyond saying that it’s from somewhere on the east coast, and the shrug and raised eyebrow she sends his way on her last word is friendly while still indicating that the answer doesn’t actually matter to her. He opens his mouth to answer, but Yancy beats him to it as he slides into the front.

“Aww, c’mon Yvonne,” he laughs, “no fair pickin’ on the kid. He doesn’t know all your tricks yet.”

The words earn Yancy a snorted laugh and an eye-roll.

“Well, I had to try, didn’t I?” she giggles, not a single hint of repentance in her tone as she puts the car into gear. “You don’t tell us _anything_ , Yancy. What’s a curious gal to do?”

“Yeah, so I’d rather you didn’t try to go around me and grill _him_ instead,” the older Becket laughs. “Oh, and, just so you know: he’s only sixteen, so no ogling.”

“You’re no fun,” Yvonne huffs. “I ogled you plenty when you started. And you were seventeen then.”

A pulse of possessive anger sweeps through Raleigh, and he reels slightly, not used to the sensation.

“Maybe,” Yancy responds with a laugh, his cavalier reaction feeding the flames in the younger Becket’s gut, “but you were only twenty one then, so it wasn’t quite so weird.”

“I guess,” the redhead concedes, and Raleigh suddenly has the feeling of being watched. Looking around instead of simply staring at the flash of skin at the base of Yancy’s neck he can see through the gap between headrest and seat, his eyes find a pair of light, gray eyes focused on him in the rearview mirror.

“However,” she adds, “I cannot promise no ogling. Your brother is a fine piece of ass. I don’t believe you when you say he’s sixteen. Hell, he’s taller than you.”

Before Raleigh can open his mouth to answer, Yancy sputters, “Hey! That’s a recent development! Way to rub it in a guy’s face when he’s already insecure. You’re so mean to me.”

“Aww, Yancy,” Yvonne’s gaze leaving Raleigh feels almost like a wool blanket has been unwound from around his chest, “you know it’s only because I love you. Why else do you think I agreed to drive you both out to Goodwill in the ass-end of nowhere?”

“Uh, gas money and free breakfast?” Yancy offers. The redheaded woman nods at that, curls flailing.

“True, very true. But, for a normal person that wouldn’t be enough, Yancy-poo, and you know it.”

And that, of all things, is what breaks Raleigh. He laughs, loudly, apparently startling both of the people in the front seat.

“ _Yancy-poo_?” he asks incredulously. “Really, Yance?”

“Oh my god, _shut up_ , both of you,” Yancy yells as Yvonne practically squeals, “He speaks!” The back of the older Becket’s neck is bright red.

Raleigh just laughs harder.

 

 

They stop at a greasy diner for breakfast, which makes Raleigh cock an eyebrow in his brother’s direction because, really, they don’t have the money to be eating out. Ever. However, his brother sends him a look that quells any objections he might’ve had, and the meal passes in relative quiet. Yvonne continues pestering Raleigh for details about his and Yancy’s shared life, and Yancy consistently deflects her questions with an almost casual ease. Other than that, the meal proceeds with something approaching ease, though the younger Becket tries to order the cheapest thing he can find on the menu—resolutely ignoring the looks he can feel Yancy boring into the side of his skull.

Afterward, Yvonne drives them to Goodwill as well as several thrift stores. By the end of the day, Raleigh feels like he’s tried on at least a thousand different articles of clothing, and his feet hurt, but he at least has enough clothes to last him a week, maybe a week and a half, between washings. Yvonne gets out of the car when she drops them off, giving Yancy a hug and whispering something in his ear that makes the older Becket blush. Her laughter rings throughout the yard, high and mischievous, and as she pulls away she squeezes Yancy’s cheeks like a small child. Raleigh’s brother sighs heavily, face still red, the sound long-suffering.

“See you on Monday, Yvonne” he says, shaking his head fondly at her.

“Sure thing, Yancy-poo!” she calls back, slamming her door shut. Raleigh swears he catches her throwing him a salacious wink through the window as she makes a U-turn in their driveway before gunning the engine and driving off.

The second they put down their bags and the door slams shut, Raleigh can’t help the smile that creeps onto his face as he whispers into the silence.

“Yancy-poo…”

His brother lets out a wordless cry and dives at him. Raleigh laughs aloud and dodges the hastily-aimed tackle, sprinting throughout the house, around the couch, and eventually up the stairs to barricade himself in their room, Yancy hot on his heels the entire way.

 

 

Two weeks later finds Raleigh and Yancy at the grocery store for their usual weekend trip. Normally it’s a fairly straight-forward affair: Raleigh keeps a list of the various foods he’s used up on the fridge and has another next to that of the new things he wants to try. This week, the second list is empty, largely due to the fact that their budget has been essentially squeezed down to almost nothing, so they’re just buying the essentials. At least, that’s what Raleigh’s trying to do.

“Yance,” he growls at his brother, anger rolling slowly in his gut as he reaches into their basket and places several boxes back on the shelf, “no. We’re not getting fucking name-brand stuff just because you think it’s better.”

“Rals,” Yancy imitates his irritated tone almost too well, “yes, we really are. Because some of it _is_ better. Better than the knock-off stuff, anyway, and I am _not_ letting you eat some of that crap. Not so long as I can do anything about it.”

“Well then at the very least use the mone—”

“ _No_.”

Raleigh glares down at his brother. One of the perks of his growth spurt: he’s no longer cowed by the height advantage Yancy’d used to have.

“God _damn_ it, Yancy, I’m not letting you starve yourself again.”

That earns him an eyeroll.

“I’m not _starving_ myself, kiddo, I just—”

“Don’t eat more than half the food I put in front of you, don’t pack a lunch to work,” Raleigh interrupts him, bringing his hands together and listing his words off on his fingers, “don’t eat breakfast anymore, and refuse to buy lunch at work. Oh, and you’ve gone several days without eating at all. Have I missed anything?”

“I’m not gonna pay freaking _eight dollars every day_ for one meal, kid. That could feed both of us for an entire day—two days, even.”

The anger undulating in Raleigh’s gut gives a particularly strong twitch, and he growls, throwing his hands in the air as he turns away. He brings his finger back down to run through his own hair, fisting the blond strands as his eyes slip closed. He tries to let the pain from the pulling sensation at his scalp distract him, but it isn’t working.

“Yeah, it probably could,” he bites out eventually, “and I’d understand that if you hadn’t been skipping meals when you actually get home, too.”

“Oh come on, Rals,” comes his brother’s voice from behind him, “that was _once_. Jesus.”

Anger morphs to rage, cold and hard, and Raleigh whirls on his heel to glare at Yancy, his teeth grinding together behind closed lips. After a few seconds under his gaze, the older Becket looks away.

“Okay, so _maybe_ twice—”

“Try five times in the past two weeks, Yance.”

His brother flinches at the words, his face becoming drawn.

“It’s not like it really matters, kid—”

And that. _That_. Is what makes Raleigh’s tenuous control snap.

“That’s the problem!” he yells, not caring if all the other people with their normal little lives and happy little families are staring at them, because this doesn’t concern them and right now all Raleigh cares about is the fact that Yancy won’t fucking _listen_. “It matters! To me! How do you think it makes me feel, knowing that you’re going out there every day, working some nine-to-five job that barely pays you enough for us to live on, and that, if _anything_ goes slightly wrong, then you’re going to _starve_ yourself so that I can eat? Do you think I _want_ that? How do you think it makes me feel when I realize that the reason there’re leftovers in the fridge in the morning is because you _lied_ and didn’t actually eat anything? How am I _supposed_ to feel about that? Grateful? You want me to be _grateful_ that—”

“Rals,” his brother’s tone is warning, but Raleigh pays it no heed.

“No, screw you, do you honestly think—”

“ _Raleigh_ ,” Yancy says, louder this time, eyes tracking something over the younger Becket’s shoulder, “c’mere. _Now_.”

Raleigh starts at the use of his full name, but he recognizes the low hint of fear and snaps his mouth shut, teeth clacking. He quickly moves around their basket and is at Yancy’s side, turning around to see what’d gotten his brother’s attention.

Two men, about Raleigh’s height, with identical expressions, identical up-styled brown hair, identical—hell, identical _everything_ —are moving towards them, steps synchronized and purposeful. The only thing distinguishing the two of them is their clothing: both are wearing jeans and combat boots, but one is wearing a brown leather jacket while the other’s is black. Both of them are obviously built underneath their clothes, and Raleigh shrinks back behind his brother a little more, hunching his shoulders slightly and resisting the urge to press his chest to Yancy’s back. A quick glance around tells him that all the other people have cleared out—conceivably because listening in on someone else’s argument makes them uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry,” says the one in the black jacket when the two men get closer, “but, we, well, we couldn’t help overhearing and we were wondering—”

“The answer is no,” Yancy says immediately. “We’re not for sale.”

The two men both come to an abrupt stop at the same time, eyes widening.

“What? _No_ ,” says brown jacket, the horror in his voice almost making Raleigh laugh because, really? What did they expect? At least once every few weeks—sometimes a few times in a single week—Yancy has a story to laughingly tell his younger brother about how someone had offered to “help” them if he would just oh-so-obligingly bend over; Raleigh strongly believes that it’s Yancy’s way of reassuring him that what happened back in June last year won’t happen again. Really, though, Raleigh understands, to a certain extent: his brother is beautiful, after all.

“That—no, look boys,” black jacket tries again, “we just want to help you. Honestly. That’s all. We’re not—we’d never—” He raises a hand to rub at his face, muttering a soft, “Jesus, Trev, what—” before brown Jacket takes over again.

“What Bruce is trying to say is that we’re not like that. We lost our parents when we were young, but we were lucky enough that, well,” he trails off, looking to the side. “We were already in college and had scholarships, so… we got lucky.”

“But we know that a lot of kids didn’t—still don’t,” Bruce adds, gaze heavy. “And Trevin and I… We know the signs. So we’re not gonna—no. Just, no. The _only_ thing we want is to help, alright?”

To Raleigh’s ears, their words sound true. However, when he looks over at his brother, Yancy’s mouth is set in a hard line.

“I didn’t buy it from the last guy,” he says slowly, voice low but still perfectly audible, “and I sure as hell ain’t buying it from you two.” He turns, grabs Raleigh’s hand in his own, and starts pulling away with a, “C’mon, Rals, we’re out of here.”

“Yance,” Raleigh whispers, “we didn’t get anyth—”

“I know,” his brother whispers back, not turning to look at him as they navigate through the aisles. “We’ll do it later when thing one and thing two have cleared out.”

Raleigh chews his lip as he moves towards their bikes, Yancy already twisting in the combination to open the lock, unable to keep from looking back over his shoulders. The two twins are nowhere in sight—at least, he’s pretty sure they’re twins, given the whole identical thing and the way they talked as if they were brothers. However, he can’t completely drive the last words he’d heard them murmuring to each other as the Beckets were walking away from his mind: “We can’t just let them leave, Trev, we have to _do_ someth—” “I know, Bruce. We’ll figure something out, okay?”

Something tells him that this isn’t over.

 

 

As it turns out, he’s right.

The two of them decide to go for a run after they finish dinner—but only after, of course, Raleigh has Yancy read to him for a bit so that they have time to digest and therefore won’t throw up. Yancy wants to go sooner, which Raleigh knows from four and a half weeks of experience is just a ploy so that he can go to bed earlier by arguing that he’s tired from the run, so he forces his brother to read to him for at least thirty minutes before he announces that he’s ready to get changed and go. He takes his time changing, too, because his brother looks damn fine in a t-shirt and a pair of shorts, and he wants to take as much time as he can to freely stare at a scantily-clad Yancy. After all, the closest they’ve gotten to being naked together was the night that… well, the night Raleigh found Yancy in the shower, but that doesn’t really count; beyond that, they typically tend to change in separate rooms—the timing just always seems to work out that way—and when they sleep together they’re both usually wearing pajama pants and t-shirts.

“C’mon Rals, let’s _go_ ,” Yancy whines from the doorway, though as Raleigh pulls his shirt over his head the complaints abruptly stop. There’s a second when Raleigh can’t see—the fabric obscuring his vision—and, when his head is finally clear again, hair sticking up from static, his brother is _right there_ , in his face, gaze so hungry that it makes the younger Becket take a half step back in surprise.

“Uh, Y-Yance?” he asks softly, swallowing nervously.

“You have no idea how good you look, do you kiddo?” Yancy asks him softly, reaching a hand out to trail his fingertips over the ridges of Raleigh’s muscles. Raleigh looks down, and, okay, he thinks he looks _alright_ , especially maybe for someone who’s only sixteen, but still, it’s not like he’s—

“So beautiful,” Yancy whispers against his cheek before the he’s leaning up to capture the younger Becket’s lips in a searing kiss, his hand splaying over Raleigh’s stomach. Raleigh flushes as a thread of pure desire rushes through him, a dull warmth spreading from his brother’s touch and pooling in his crotch. His eyes slip closed when Yancy’s nails run over the sensitive flesh just above his waistband, and he thrusts forward almost instinctively, his hardened dick encountering his brother’s. The loose fabric of the shorts might as well be nonexistent for the amount it prevents Raleigh from feeling Yancy’s cock _throb_ at the contact.

“F-fuck, Yance,” he pants into his brother’s mouth, whining as the older Becket’s hands circle around and grip his hips for leverage, fingertips digging into the flesh just above his ass as the other blond starts thrusting up in response. “Fuck, oh _fuck_ , Yancy, oh fuck, _Yancy_ —”

Perhaps it’s the way Raleigh says his brother’s name, he’s not entirely sure. All he knows is that, all of a sudden, he’s cold, and when he opens his eyes again it’s to see Yancy with a hand pressed against his own forehead, the other pushing down on the obscene tent in his shorts.

“Fuck, kid, I— _fuck_ , I’m sorry,” he says, blinking rapidly before he turns around and grabs the younger Becket’s running shirt, holding it out in Raleigh’s general direction. “Shouldn’t’ve done that.”

Raleigh sighs and takes the shirt, slipping it over his head.

“S’okay, Yance,” he answers, voice soft. “I liked it. I know you don’t want to do anything until, well,” he shrugs, “later, but, I mean, maybe… maybe we could talk some time about what we _can_ do? Maybe not _sex_ , but like… other stuff?”

The look Yancy gives him as he turns slowly is thoughtful, as if Raleigh’s speaking words he hadn’t even considered. After a few moments, he nods.

“Yeah, okay. I guess we could do that. After the run?”

A smile breaks out on Raleigh’s face, and he nods.

“Looking forward to it,” he proclaims, swooping forward to give Yancy a kiss, pushing past the other blond’s lips to plunder his brother’s mouth. The action draws a shudder out of the older Becket. Raleigh has learned, quite plainly, in the past six months that Yancy absolutely loves it when he takes control, especially spontaneously like that; it’s possible that Raleigh gets off on it a little, too: being bigger, taller, than his older brother.

However, after a few seconds he pulls away, their lips separating with an obscenely wet sound.

“Last one to make it back to the house has to do the dishes,” Raleigh breathes, and then he’s off, tromping down the hallway and the stairs as his brother shouts back at him, “That’s cheating!”

Raleigh just laughs, throwing himself out the door, Yancy’s indignant cries following him the entire way.

 

 

The path they end up running is one Raleigh’s devised over the past few months. It’s roughly thirteen miles long, though it is technically possible to ignore a loop and reduce it to eight miles if either of them wants. Once they set off, Yancy catching up to Raleigh when the younger Becket slows down, Raleigh’s brother asks for them to run the longer loop, presumably, Raleigh thinks, to work out his frustrations from the store earlier. As they’re finishing up and meandering up the path to their house, they’re debating gamely which one of them had made it to the driveway first—Raleigh insists it was him, while Yancy insists it was a tie—when Yancy suddenly goes still beside him, eyes pointing at the house. Raleigh stops laughing—stops jogging, too—and looks back at his brother with confusion before he looks back at up the driveway. It doesn’t take him but a glance to spot the reason for the wide-eyed expression his brother is now wearing.

At the top of the driveway, sitting just outside the now-empty garage, is a black SUV. Standing outside the SUV, looking around, are the two guys from the store.

“Rals,” Yancy says softly, walking up in front of his brother and reaching behind himself to place a hand on Raleigh’s arm, “stay behind me.”

Raleigh doesn’t say anything; after all, Yancy knows he’ll listen. As one, they start walking slowly up the drive towards the two men. At some point, both men obviously become aware of their presence, because the one in the brown leather jacket—Trevin, Raleigh’s mind helpfully supplies—gestures at them, and the one in black—Bruce—turns to face them. Neither man makes any move away from the car, content to wait for the Beckets to reach them. As soon as they’re within reasonable speaking distance, Yancy calls out to them, “I thought I made myself clear earlier.”

The sighs both men heave are audible even at this distance.

“We were serious about wanting to help,” Trevin replies. “Look, we… we know you didn’t ask us for help, but, well…” He gestures to his brother, and Bruce pops the hatch at the back of the SUV open. Inside are bags of groceries. Lots of them.

“We didn’t know what you boys liked,” Bruce says by way of explanation, shrugging his shoulders, “so we got a bit of everything.”

“No one should have to force themselves to go hungry,” Trevin murmurs, almost quietly enough that Raleigh misses it, the older man’s gaze boring into Yancy with an intensity that the younger Becket can feel even from where he’s standing behind his brother. “Least of all someone as young as one of you.”

Yancy grabs Raleigh’s hand in his own sweaty palm, threading their fingers together as he pulls the younger Becket slowly over towards the car, keeping his body between Raleigh and the older men. Raleigh can’t see the other teen’s face, but he can read the tense set to his shoulders easily enough

His brother is scared.

“Rals,” Yancy says softly when they near the open trunk, “take some stuff inside, would you? I’m going to talk to…” He trails off, sending a pointed glance towards the two strangers.

“Oh, uh, I’m Bruce,” black-jacket says.

“And I’m Trevin,” adds brown-jacket. “Last name Gage.”

Yancy’s turned enough that Raleigh can see the way his brother raises an incredulous eyebrow at them. Trevin sighs, the tone far too understanding, and reaches under his shirt to pull out a pair of dog tags. He lifts the chain over his head and hands it over to Yancy to inspect.

“Bruce, let him see yours, too.”

“Oh come on, Trev, you don’t really think that’s—”

“If it were me, would you be satisfied with just our word?”

Bruce screws up his face at that.

“I… no, I guess not.”

Without any further argument, Bruce produces a matching set of tags, handing them over. Yancy takes them, looks thoughtfully at the tabs of inscribed metal, and Raleigh knows he’s memorizing the names, ranks, and serial numbers of both men. When he’s satisfied, he nods tightly, holding the chains out for the older pair of brothers to take back. There’s a moment that’s almost halfway comical when they apparently realize that they’ve taken the wrong tags and they have to swap, but the humor fades as soon as they catch sight of the way Yancy’s face is stony, determined.

“Rals, go ahead and grab some stuff,” Yancy says, voice slightly less timid this time, although there’s a tightness there that Raleigh doesn’t like. “I’m gonna talk to the lieutenants.”

“Actually,” Bruce interjects, “Trev can probably help him, make things go faster. If, of course,” he adds, lifting his hands defensively, palms outward, “that’s okay with you two.”

Raleigh looks up at his brother, seeing the fear there until Yancy closes his eyes and sighs heavily, nodding as he smoothes his facial features so completely that even Raleigh can’t read them.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine. Rals? Can you show him where everything goes?”

“S-sure,” Raleigh stammers, moving forward and grabbing as many bags as he can carry, checking for cold items and prioritizing them before moving towards the door. Behind him, he hears Trevin gathering up bags as well, and then footsteps moving onto the porch behind him as he gets out his key and unlocks the door. Gesturing for the older man to precede him, Raleigh holds the door open and then kicks it shut behind him once they’re both in the house. They move into the kitchen in relative silence, not saying a word, and for a while the only sound that fills the room is the rustling of bags and their footsteps, Trevin’s much heavier than Raleigh’s used to hearing due to the older man’s booted feet. Raleigh sets about putting the cold things he was carrying into the fridge and, when applicable, the freezer, with Trevin handing him items without prompting. After a minute or two of this, Trevin finally speaks up.

“It’s the truth, by the way.”

Raleigh doesn’t answer verbally, just gives the older man an arch look before continuing to arrange things in the fridge; it’s not like it’s difficult, given how relatively empty it is. The older man sighs.

“Me and Bruce, we just want to help you and Yancy.”

A frown pulls itself onto the younger Becket’s features, and he turns towards the lieutenant.

“How do you know my brother’s name?”

For some reason, the question makes Trevin laugh.

“The same way I know yours, Raleigh Becket,” he says, “and the same way we knew you lived here. We asked someone. People in this town like you boys. Most want to help you but aren’t really sure how. Did you know that, when we told the manager at the store that we were buying all this for you two, he took half off the price? No other reason, just made us promise to get it to you.”

Raleigh blinks at that, not quite sure how to feel. “We don’t want anyone’s charity,” he eventually mutters under his breath, turning back towards the fridge and shuffling around a few things in the crisper drawer to make room for the bag of apples he just pulled out. The words get him another laugh.

“Believe me, Bruce and I get that—we do. But, the way you two were talking, well…” the older man trails off, tone becoming more serious, “it sounded like you two needed help, is all. And…”

When he trails off, the brunet’s tone has a certain weight to it, something that _makes_ Raleigh look up at him again.

“And?” he queries. “And… what?”

“And, well,” Trevin scrubs a hand over his face, “it’s—you boys don’t have to say yes, okay?—there’s… Bruce and I are on our way to Kodiak Island. You know where that is?”

When Raleigh just shrugs noncommittally, Trevin looks torn for a moment before he continues.

“You heard about what happened in Vancouver two months back, right?”

“Vaguely,” Raleigh answers. He and Yancy had stopped watching the news reports of Kaiju attacks after Scissure because, really, there were only so many times you could see a city filled with thousands of people get nuked before you just… couldn’t anymore.

“So you know about Brawler Yukon, then.”

The younger Becket’s confusion must be obvious—he hasn’t heard the name before, and he hasn’t really been around a lot of people for just over two months—because Trevin elaborates.

“There’s a new way to fight the Kaiju. They’re gigantic robots called Jaegers. They kill the Kaiju without unnecessary collateral damage. Bruce and I are flying out to Kodiak Island to try and get a chance to pilot one.”

“And what’s this got to do with me ‘n Yance?” Raleigh asks warily.

“Well, I mean, if you and your brother wanted, Bruce and I—we could—I mean—you wouldn’t have to worry about something as basic as feeding yourselves anymore, and you could both finish your schooling, and, if you wanted to one day, try to join to program as well, and—”

“You’re asking us to come with you,” Raleigh breathes, cutting the other man off. “Why? What makes you think we would?”

“Because I know what it’s like, losing my parents,” Trevin says softly. “You do, too. You and your brother probably know how hard it is even more so than me and Bruce. If we hadn’t had each other, I…” the older man trails off, but then clears his throat and shakes his head, dislodging the distance that’d been creeping into his gaze. “If we hadn’t had each other, I don’t know what we’d’ve done.”

His expression turns hard.

“There are a lot of orphans now thanks to the Kaiju. Bruce and I are gonna make sure there aren’t any more. Or die trying.”

The words resonate with something deep inside of Raleigh, and he realizes for the first time that, yes, he knows exactly what the other man is saying. Every time a Kaiju has made landfall, or a nuke has leveled an entire city, the only thing he can think about is all the people who’ve just died, all the families that are going to be broken—

“Say I wanted to go with you,” he hedges, standing from where he’d been kneeling in front of the fridge, letting the metal door fall shut. “What would we have to do?”

The look on Trevin’s face, the way it’s so open and _hopeful_ , does more to convince Raleigh that the two men are honestly just trying to help them. He’s pretty sure that someone who had ill intentions would’ve at the very least looked more triumphant or leered at him or _something_. Instead, Trevin looks like he’s truly, completely surprised, but could not be happier.

“Really?” He breathes, eyes lighting up.

Raleigh shrugs. “Maybe. Depends.”

“Well, uh,” the older man stammers, “we, uh, we’re allowed to bring family along without any problem, so, I mean, technically, we could—”

“You want to _adopt_ us?” Raleigh’s not sure how comfortable he is with that idea.

“In terms of paperwork only, and Bruce ‘n I don’t have any problems forging a few documents. Not,” he closes his eyes and breathes for a moment, a small, but very real, smile finding its way onto his face, “not for something like this. You two could even keep your last names if you wanted.”

Raleigh mulls it over. The offer is tempting, to say the least. And, if there’s a chance to help people—to prevent more children from going through anything like what he and Yancy have endured these past two years, or worse—shouldn’t he take it?

“I’ll have to talk to Yancy,” he says eventually, “but I…” the younger Becket looks down at his feet, “I’d like that. But only if Yancy agrees to it, too.”

Trevin puts his number into Raleigh’s phone, then Bruce’s as well as a backup in case he doesn’t answer.

“We’re in town for about a week or so before we ship out to Kodiak. If you boys decide before then, go ahead and call. If not, well,” he gestures at the empty bags on the floor, face twisting slightly in a pained expression that erases any lingering doubts about the twins’ intentions Raleigh might have, “at least we know you’re okay on food for a while, I guess.”

 

 

Yancy won’t tell Raleigh what he and Bruce discussed. Raleigh huffs at his older brother, but ultimately lets it go.

 

 

“No, Rals, it’s not happening.”

A spark of anger wells up in Raleigh’s gut, but he quickly quenches it.

“C’mon, Yance, why not? We could _help_ people.”

“Yeah, or we could not.”

The anger curls in his belly again, spark now fanned by the indifferent tone in his brother’s voice, and this time he can’t completely extinguish it.

“And _why not_?” Raleigh asks with a huff. “Ever since Mom died and Dad left, we’ve done _nothing_. You dropped out of school and got a job, and that’s _it_. I’ve been going to school, yeah, but beyond that? Yance, I’m about to go into my junior year and I haven’t even _thought_ about college yet. Hell, I don’t even know if I _want_ to go.”

 _That_ gets Yancy’s attention.

“The hell you’re not,” the older Becket mutters softly.

“And who says you get to decide that for me?” Raleigh retorts hotly.

“I do,” Yancy says, voice dangerously low. “I’m your older brother. I’m responsible for you. I will _not_ have you running off to join the damn military.”

“We could do some _good_ , Yance,” Raleigh argues back. “We could _help_ people—”

“ _—Or_ ,” Yancy cuts him off again, “we could _not_. It’s not our problem, Rals.”

“And what if what I want is to _make it our problem_?” Raleigh yells at his brother. “I want to stop feeling stuck here in this house! I want to stop feeling like the world around us is slowly crumbling to pieces! I mean, what did you plan to do if I went off to college? Keep working the same job? Stay here, stuck, _forever_? Did you ever consider that I might want you to come with me? Did you ever consider that _I might want something you don’t_? That maybe, if we can go to this program thing with the Gages—”

“Who we hardly know,” Yancy interjects, but Raleigh speaks over him, tone hardening.

“— _who I happen to trust_ , then, if nothing else, we can both get our degrees and go to college _together_? Or, we could actually, I dunno, join the program? At least we’d have more options than being stuck _here_.”

He doesn’t mean to say the last word with as much venom as it ends up holding, but he wouldn’t take it back, either. His blood is pounding in his ears, and there’s a heat shifting, swirling in his belly, shifting under his skin like a restless _thing_.

Which is, of course, when Yancy makes it so much worse.

“Rals,” he says, voice infuriatingly calm, “no. We’re not doing this. It doesn’t involve us. I don’t often say this—hell, I don’t think I’ve ever actually _had_ to say this before—but I’m putting my foot down. I’m your older brother. I’m responsible for you. And we. Are. _Not_. Doing this. Am I clear?”

“Fuck you,” Raleigh growls. “You might be my older brother but that doesn’t mean you get to dictate my life.”

“Maybe not,” Yancy concedes, crossing his arms across his chest, “but you _will_ listen to me on this, kid. We’re not going. Delete their numbers. This conversation is over.”

The sound that comes out of Raleigh’s mouth is somewhere between a snarl and a growl—he hadn’t even known he could _make_ a noise like that—and he catches the barest hint of surprise in his brother’s eyes as he turns on his heel, throwing his hands into the air in helpless frustration and anger as he strides towards the door.

What he expects is that he’ll slam the door in his brother’s face, go down to the living room, read some, calm down, maybe go for a run if he can’t. He expects that, after an hour or two, the two of them will not-so-casually happen to find themselves in the same room and apologize and actually discuss this like reasonable people once they’ve cooled down; after all, that’s the way most of their arguments end up working.

What he does not expect is for the writhing, shifting anger under his skin to flare to life, crawling up towards his fingertip and _singeing_ his nerve endings. He does not expect the sudden feeling of something _actually_ rippling under the flesh of his arms, nor the way, with a sensation that’s impossible to describe, _scales_ burst forth from his fingers, hands, and partway up his forearms. And he most _certainly_ does not expect the fire that erupts from his palms, roaring towards the ceiling in twin columns of heat and light.

 _Golden_ fire.

The same color as the scales that are receding back into his flesh just as quickly as they’d appeared.

“What the fu—” he manages to get out, eyes stretching themselves wide.

Which is when the house starts to collapse on top of him.

Raleigh falls backward as a piece of burning roof falls precisely where he’d just been, and he rolls instinctively away from the heat it gives off. A quick glance across the room shows him that it’s effectively blocked his exit through the room’s only door, which leaves the windows. However, as soon as he makes to stand up, smoke rushes into Raleigh’s lungs and forces him to his knees, eyes stinging.

“Rals!”

Yancy’s voice cuts through the roar and crackle of the fire as it spreads, and Raleigh tries to raise his head to look around, to see, but the second he does his head is lifted too high. He coughs, his lungs feeling like they’re on fire just like the house, and tries to draw in a full breath of air but he can’t seem to find the energy.

Then Yancy is right there, in front of him, kneeling down and offering him a hand. Raleigh takes it without question, a part of his mind wondering how the hell his brother isn’t choking like he is.

“Hang on, kiddo,” his brother tells him, and Raleigh tries to respond, but all he can manage is a weak croak as he flings his arms around the older Becket’s shoulders.

Yancy raises a hand above his head, and then a line of the purest-white fire Raleigh has ever seen leaps from his brother’s palm with a scream of tortured air and punches a hole in the roof. The arm that’d been raised comes down to wrap around Raleigh’s waist, and the younger blond notices that there are scales—orange and yellow—dotting his brother’s arms. And they’re spreading. He looks up at Yancy’s face, trying as hard as he can to keep his eyes open.

Vertically-slitted, glowing blue eyes—the color of the sky at high noon—meet his own.

The scales that’d been creeping up Yancy’s arms crawl up from underneath his shirt’s collar, then, covering his face, and he throws his head back as two wings—huge and covered in the same orange-yellow plating—rip through his shirt, bursting from his back and stretching wide, glittering in the firelight. And then the wings actually move, throwing ash and smoke into Raleigh’s eyes as they beat once, twice, three times, and then they’re _flying_ up, up, out of the hole that’d been blasted through the burning remnants of the ceiling.

As soon as they clear the smoke cloud, though, Raleigh realizes he’s made a mistake, and he’s overcome with a sense of déjà vu so strong that it nearly chokes him.

The scales that are covering his brother’s arms. They aren’t orange and yellow.

They’re silver.

Raleigh’s mind tries desperately to come to terms with this, to force it to make some kind of sense. When it fails, he decides, to hell with reality, and everything goes dark.

 

 

 

_When he and the dragon land in the clearing in the forest, miniature dust storms kicked up by the wind of their passage, the first thing the other does it curl its wings about itself. The form underneath seems to bulge, shift, and then shrink, and when they retract, there’s a humanoid, winged form standing before him. Raleigh starts towards it, curious, the moonlight reflecting off the silver scales. The creature’s reptilian, cerulean eyes seem to glow brighter the closer Raleigh gets, and he reaches out a hand, mesmerized._

_His fingers brush over the mercury scales, dry and warm to the touch, as he lets the tips drag until his palm is cupping the jaw. The dragon-human’s eyes are locked on his own. He doesn’t know what compels him to say it, but the word just slips out._

_“Mine.”_

_The cheek in his hand nuzzles into the soft skin of his palm for a moment before the scales start receding, and the wings, which had been slowly encircling the pair of them, retract into the creature’s back. Once the scales have all faded, Raleigh can’t help but smile at the figure before him._

_Yancy smiles back, eyes still inhuman and glowing, before he lifts a hand to run his thumb over Raleigh’s cheekbone and murmur, tone affirming, “Mine.”_

_As his brother’s lips descend on his, Raleigh can’t help but feel like he’s flying._

 

 

When Raleigh regains consciousness, it’s to his brother kneeling over him, clothes blackened, hair wind-swept. They’re at the edge of their yard, he thinks muzzily: one of the trees a few dozen feet away appears to be the same one he and Yancy had carved their initials into when they were kids, the knife wounds scarring the tree with an indent that still hadn’t fully faded.

Something is off. He can’t quite seem to focus; everything seems far away and muffled somehow, and there’s a weird sort of crackling sound in the distance that won’t go away and the smell of smoke—

It all comes crashing back to him, then, and cold panic chills Raleigh’s veins as he crawls away from his brother on his hands and knees until his feet find purchase and he breaks into a run; he would’ve made it farther except that, in his desperate scramble, he actually runs _into_ a tree, hands instinctively grasping at the rough bark and putting the trunk partially between himself and his… is that even really his brother?

“Rals,” Yancy says softly, hands raised to show he’s unarmed, “it’s okay, it’s just me, I swear.”

“Yeah, sure,” the younger blond answers, panic rising up his throat, “because my brother is totally covered in scales a-and has wings and can shoot _flames_ from his hands. _Right_. That makes _perfect_ sense. Of _course_ , why didn’t I think of that? What the fuck _are_ you, anyway?”

A sudden thought, a memory really, flashes across his mind: flames shooting from his own hands, impacting the ceiling and setting the house on fire as golden scales covered his skin—and, really, his mind isn’t even going to touch the fact that their childhood home, including all their possessions, is burning to the ground several hundred feet away. He lifts his palms up to face him, then, fingers curling inward as horror spreads through him.

“What the fuck am _I_? Fuck, am—” he nearly chokes as a hysterical sob—or laugh, he’s not sure—tries to rip its way from his throat and his knees buckle, “—am I even _human_?”

His brother is there in an instant, and, really, any doubts Raleigh might’ve had about this being his brother vanish the moment Yancy’s arms wrap around his shoulders, holding him as the older teen maneuvers them to the grassy ground. A hand finds its way into his hair when Raleigh plants his forehead against his brother’s collarbone, the fingers rubbing a soothing pattern into the younger Becket’s scalp as the sobs finally manage to work their way out of his charred throat.

“I’m sorry, Rals,” Yancy is whispering from above him, “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, kiddo. I didn’t know, I swear to god, if I’d’ve known that you were one, too, then I would’ve told you _years_ ago.”

“One—” Raleigh hiccups, sniffles, then tries again. “One _what_?”

“In a minute, kiddo,” Yancy breathes into his hair, pulling back slightly to plant a kiss on his temple before he starts rubbing soothing patterns into his back. “I know it’s a shock, okay? Just… just let it all out. We can talk in a minute. Or two. Or even twenty. Just… whenever you’re ready.”

Raleigh wants to argue that he’s ready _now_ , damn it, but the words seem to break a dam the younger Becket hadn’t even known he was still holding, because it all comes rushing out. The confusion, the anger, the _fear_ : they all flow from his body in a torrent as his hands come up to clutch desperately at his brother’s body, fingers tangling in the other teen’s shirt. He feels as if the entire world has just been shifted sideways and he’ll fall if he doesn’t find something solid onto which to hold. So he digs his grip into the only thing that makes sense—the only thing that’s _ever_ made sense is his life—and tries as hard as he can not to get lost in the flood that’s pouring out of him.

When he finally manages to calm down, Raleigh feels like he’s just… hollow. Empty. Everything’s just sort of… flowed out of him, and he allows the warmth of Yancy’s embrace keep him centered, grounded—anchored.

“Feel better, kid?”

The younger Becket tilts his head to the side slightly, considering the question, and… yeah. He does. There’s still a background sort of fear, since he still has no idea what’s going on, but, really, he still has Yancy. At least, he’s pretty sure he does, and he looks up at his brother to see that the other teen is looking down at him, expression unreadable except for the worry in his eyes. Raleigh can’t—won’t—let that rest, so he leans forward and plants a soft kiss against the older blond’s lips.

“Yeah,” he answers when he pulls back, blinking a few times. “I just… what’s going on, Yance?”

His brother sighs softly, gaze switching to a point on the ground just to the left of Raleigh that seems to have become suddenly fascinating.

“I wanted to tell you, Rals, I really did, but after you didn’t shift, we… we decided it was probably better if you didn’t know.”

“We?” Raleigh asks softly, tilting his head as much as the awkward angle allows.

“Me ‘n Mom,” Yancy explains, sighing. “Mom was a, uh, a dragon. Sort of. Something from Greek mythology or something, half woman, half dragon. She told me once, but I don’t really remember. Drake-something. Point is, though, that she… she’s the reason I’m— _we’re_ like this. _God_ , that’s weird to say.”

After his brother remains silent for a moment, seemingly lost in his own thoughts, Raleigh nudges him in the side and prompts him, “So, why’d you and mom keep it from me?” He doesn’t mean the question to come out sounding accusing, but, really, he can’t help it.

“We wanted you to have a normal childhood and all that, I guess,” Yancy said after a moment’s pause, ducking his head slightly. “I shifted when I was two—apparently almost burned the house down. Mom said she and Dad were really surprised because, y’know, she was only _half_ dragon and Dad was, well, not at all.” He shakes his head, as if dislodging the memories, before he continues. “Anyway, yeah, after you were born and didn’t shift, Mom told me to keep quiet about it around you ‘cause, y’know, she wanted you to grow up without having to worry about any of this crap and… I dunno,” he shrugs, “over time it just kinda became a habit, to keep that part of myself hidden. And, I mean, you remember when Mom got sick? The talk we had?”

Raleigh doesn’t even have to try: of course he remembers that day. He nods in his brother’s arms, nose bumping against Yancy’s chest.

“She told me, then, that dragons weren’t allowed to fall in love with humans. That it would kill them. Or, at the very least, make them lose their magic, which is what keeps them alive for so long.”

Raleigh blinks, and then lifts his head slightly so that he’s looking his brother in the eye, the older Becket’s hands settling on his shoulders.

“So,” he hedges, “she died because…”

“Because she loved Dad, yeah,” Yancy finishes for him. “It took about twenty years for her magic to completely fade, and when it did she started aging. And, since she’d been around since ancient Greece… Well… she was old. But that was why she didn’t want to go to the doctor, didn’t want help: she knew it couldn’t be stopped. Any doctor would’ve just looked at her and scratched their head in confusion. And all because, for whatever reason, dragon magic hates humans. Mom said she thought it had something to do with greed or falling in love with someone you’re obviously going to outlive, so loving something impermanent, which isn’t in a dragon’s nature.”

“Huh,” Raleigh murmurs. A thought slams into him, then, sudden and vivid, and a chill runs up his spine. “So, wait, Yance,” he starts softly, “if dragons who love humans die from it, why were you okay, with, y’know,” he gestures between the two of them, “ _this_? Before tonight, I mean.”

That gets him a rueful chuckle.

“I wasn’t remember? I moved out of our room, started avoiding you… all because I’d been having dreams about you since I was probably eight or so. Hell, kid, by the time Mom got sick, I’d pretty much convinced myself that you were gonna be my mate—dragons have those, apparently; Mom’s died about twelve hundred years ago. But yeah. Then I found out that, since you were human, that wasn’t possible, and, well,” the older Becket shrugs helplessly, sending Raleigh an apologetic look, “the rest is history.”

Raleigh freed a hand from his brother’s shirt to rub at the back of one of the arms that are still propped on his shoulders, planting a soft kiss to the skin there.

“Okay, but why’d you _start_? I mean, Yance, we’ve been… doing whatever it is we’re doing for, I dunno, six months now? That’s six months that you thought I was a human and you were, I guess, really okay with this. What changed?”

Before Raleigh even finishes his question, though, Yancy is shaking his head, rueful smile still decorating his lips.

“Nothing _changed_ , kid,” he answers, “except that I didn’t care anymore. I know I don’t say it enough at all, but I do love you, Rals.”

The younger Becket snorts softly, murmuring, “I know that, you idiot. I love you, too. Even if you’ve been keeping this from me all this time.”

“No, Rals, listen to me,” something in his brother’s voice makes Raleigh sit slightly straighter, the smirk that’d been creeping onto his face dropping away, “I _love_ you, okay? You really want to know what changed? I realized that I was _in love_ with you, too, that I had been for a long time, and that I didn’t _care_ if it killed me, I wanted to have you anyway. Whether that meant I died in five years, ten, twenty, a _hundred_ , it didn’t matter to me, because all I wanted was to have you by my side the entire time—it’s _still_ all I want. So, Raleigh Becket,” he proclaims, gripping his brother’s shoulders tightly enough that it almost makes the younger blond wince, “I _love_ you, okay? Don’t you _ever_ doubt that. _Ever_. Because I would literally do _anything_ for you, d’you hear me? I would gladly _die_ for you, if it meant that I’d gotten to spend even just a few years—hell, even a few _days_ —loving you the way I’ve always wanted to.”

Raleigh can’t think of any words to respond to that, so he answers the only way he knows how: he leans forward and presses his lips against Yancy’s, opening his mouth to invite the older blond in. He tries to show his brother that, yes, he knows exactly what the older teen means, and he feels that way, too. In the end, though, the action, while certainly appropriate, feels somehow inadequate, because, as soon as he pulls back to breathe, lips and tongue still tingling, he murmurs, “I love you too, Yance,” resting his forehead against Yancy’s. He feels warm, flushed, all over.

“So beautiful, Rals,” Yancy whispers to him, glowing, cerulean eyes boring into Raleigh’s own. “Your eyes are beautiful.”

At the confused look Raleigh sends the older Becket, he elaborates, “Your dragon eyes. They’re just… beautiful. And, uh, if you want, I can teach you how to control them.”

Something about his brother’s tone, he’s not sure what—perhaps the melancholy undertone—pings off of a thought that’d been lurking at the back of Raleigh’s mind, and he suddenly sits bolt upright, head swiveling towards the house’s funeral pyre.

“Holy shit, Yance,” he mutters hoarsely, “the house. What the hell are we gonna do? All our stuff was in there: our money, our clothes—fuck, _everything_. What…”

Yancy sighs deeply, then reaches into Raleigh’s pants pocket, pulling out the younger blond’s cell phone. He flips it open, scrolls through the contacts, and then hands it back, GAGE, TREVIN highlighted on the screen.

“Call them,” he says simply, face twisting like he’d just taken a bite of a lemon. “I guess we should go try and be big goddamn heroes.”

 

 


	5. a new foundation

Trevin seems surprised to hear from him, to say the least; Raleigh likes to think it’s because it’s almost two in the morning and not the alternative—that he simply hadn’t been expecting a phone call. The older man doesn’t miss a beat when the younger Becket asks if the Gages can come pick him and Yancy up at their house, simply says they’ll be there in twenty minutes.

“Accident. Faulty wiring, we think,” Raleigh lies when the twins drive up to the smoldering remnants of the home, both getting out and staring, wide-eyed, at the destruction. In an instant, though, the Beckets have two very worried men practically on top of them, checking them over.

“But you’re okay, right?” the one fussing over Raleigh asks. The twins don’t have their leather jackets on, so Raleigh doesn’t know which is which.

“We’re fine,” Yancy answers. “Rals inhaled some smoke, but I think he’s mostly okay. Been breathing just fine for about an hour now.”

The Gages don’t seem entirely satisfied by that, but they relent eventually when Raleigh complains of being tired. When they get back to the hotel room the two men are sharing, they tell the brothers that they can have one of the two queen beds.

“We can take the couch, really,” Yancy tells them, “we don’t want to put you guys out or anything. Seriously.”

The twins share a look before one of them shakes his head at his brother, murmuring, “They’re so funny, Trev,”—so, presumably, the one speaking is Bruce—before he turns to address the Beckets. “We’ve shared a bed more than once in our lives, guys. It’s seriously fine. Unless,” his face tightens, and he looks down.

“Unless you two have a problem with sharing a bed with each other,” Trevin finishes, brows creasing together.

“N-no!” Raleigh pipes up, perhaps a bit too fast. “No, it’s not an issue. After our mom died, we…” he trails off, but Trevin—he thinks it’s Trevin—nods understandingly.

“We did the same thing when our parents died,” he says. “It’s just… It’s—”

“Easier that way,” Yancy finishes softly, blinking once he realizes what he’s said. The four of them all trade a look, a moment of _connection_ strung in the air between them, bright and glittering and so _beautiful_ it almost hurts. Something tight coils in Raleigh’s belly, and, before he can think about what he’s doing, he just _reacts_ and flings himself into the twins’ arms. They look almost terrified at first, but he doesn’t care because they _understand_ , they _get it_ and he just… He doesn’t know how to deal with this, how to interact with someone who doesn’t look at him and Yancy with suspicion or pity but who just _understands_. Tears fall down his cheeks for the second time that night as he whispers soft words of thanks to the two men, pressing his forehead to someone’s chest—he’s not sure which of them it is. Eventually, he feels Yancy settle in behind him and a wet patch from where his brother’s nose is pressed into his shoulder. The twins’ combined embrace closes around the pair of them, and, for just a moment, Raleigh allows himself to believe that they’re all going to be okay.

 

 

That first night with the Gages, for the first time since he was five, Raleigh does not dream of dragons.

 

 

They stay in Anchorage for five days. In those five days, the twins go through all the necessary paperwork to legally adopt the Beckets. It isn’t much more than a formality, they promise: all it means is that they’re responsible for the two of them—or, at least, Raleigh, since he’s still a minor—and for keeping them clothed and fed and in school. It also, they explain, means that they can bring the Beckets with them to Kodiak Island.

The five days are also a learning experience. Raleigh learns what it’s like to open up to someone who understands—who _listens_ —and tells the Gages about his and Yancy’s childhood, leaving out certain details of course. He also learns that Trevin is younger than Bruce by about six minutes, but that Trevin—at least from their interactions—has the much more dominant personality. He learns that the twins were born and raised in California, that Bruce studied to be a doctor and Trevin to be a musician before they both joined the military. He learns that Bruce has a small, almost-invisible scar just above his left eyebrow that’s from a scalpel blade that another student had popped off its handle improperly and had almost taken out the brunet’s eye.

He also learns that Trevin has always wanted kids, but that neither of the twins have found someone with whom to settle down, so they’ve mostly stuck together. This, then, is the explanation given when Trevin drags the two of them around clothing stores the day following the fire and demands that they each pick out at least six different outfits for varying weather conditions. Apparently, he’s just working out the parental urge to spoil them rotten, Bruce murmurs to Raleigh when he’s sure they’re out of earshot of the younger twin.

The Gages learn about Yancy’s nightmares on their third night together when he wakes the entire room with one of them. They don’t ask what he’s dreaming about—Yancy’d already told them about what had happened—and instead give Raleigh space when he explains that he’s always been the only one able to calm his brother down when he gets like this. However, when Raleigh wakes up the next day, the two brothers having already left for their morning run, he finds a takeout box filled with syrup-drenched waffles waiting for them—they’re still warm, so they must’ve been left in the past half hour or so.

And, at the end of the five days, Raleigh somehow finds himself almost thinking of the two older men as family.

 

 

On their last night in Anchorage, a thought slams into Raleigh just as he’s drifting off to sleep, and he sits upright in bed, the Gages not stirring where they’re already snoring softly, back-to-back.

“Yancy?” he whispers. “You awake?”

There’s a sleepy mumble from his brother that sounds affirmative to Raleigh, so he continues on.

“You said you’d been having dreams about me since you were eight?”

Another affirmative sound.

“When did those start, exactly?”

Yancy lets out a tired grumble, rolling over.

“Same night as yours,” he says with a sigh. “Mom told me it’s how dragons find their mates: the shared dreams.”

Raleigh is silent for a moment before he manages to choke out, “So, you’re saying we’re—”

“Mates, yes,” his brother finishes for him.

“But, does that mean—”

“That we’re fated to be together or anything like that? Nah, there’re no stars aligning or anything like that. It just means that our dragons think we’re most compatible with one another. Which, uh,” Yancy’s voice falters for a moment, “y’know, I think we’ve basically proven that at this point.”

“No,” Raleigh says softly, irritation churning in his gut, “I mean, does that mean that I feel the way I do about you because you’re my mate? Because… because this side of me I didn’t know existed decided I should like you?”

Even before he finishes, he can see Yancy shaking his head against his pillow in the ruddy half-light from the alarm clock.

“Nah. More like the other way around. You feel the way you do about me because of you. Same for me. We’re just mates because some part of us realizes that we’re most compatible together and that we’d probably develop feelings for each other with enough time.”

“And, so, now that we’ve found each other,” Raleigh starts, “like, really found each other completely and stuff, I guess…”

“It’s why the dreams have stopped,” Yancy finishes, his hair sliding against the pillow as he nods.

“Whatever you two’re talkin’ ‘bout over there,” comes a sleepy mumble from the twins’ bed that Raleigh is pretty sure is Trevin, the words nearly making him squeak in surprise, “shuddup and get to sleep. Got an early flight t’m’rrow.”

Raleigh tries to hide his blush as he lays back down, burrowing his face into Yancy’s chest to breathe in the scents that still smell like home to him.

 

 

Adapting to life at the Academy is surprisingly easy.

Truthfully, it’s not all that different from their normal summer routine. They’re given family accommodations instead of traditional barracks, which means that the Gages are in the room next to them, but that the connecting wall has a door in it that the four of them decide, mutually, to leave unlocked, but to not use unless absolutely necessary. There are two beds in each room, but Raleigh and Yancy decide through some unspoken agreement to push their bunks over onto one side, forming a single, larger bed that dominates a single wall. When Bruce comes in to pick them up for dinner on their first night, he glances over at the sleeping accommodations and simply nods at them, murmuring, “The nightmares?” in the brothers’ general direction.

“Yeah,” Yancy replies softly, looking down. “Helps to have him close.”

The words send a surge of protectiveness coursing through Raleigh’s veins, and he can’t quite keep himself from inching closer to his brother’s side. Like with the beds, if Bruce has a comment of some kind, he keeps it to himself and simply sends a heavy glance between the brothers, eyes full of understanding.

 

 

The Beckets take to joining the Gages on their morning runs, and, after a few days, add the older men’s workout routine to their morning as well. After that, they typically all get breakfast together, and then the Gages have to go to training while Raleigh and Yancy go to school. Well, at least, it’s the PPDC’s rough approximation of school. Tutors are provided for all their core classes, and on the first day Raleigh’s surprised to find that they’re not the only ones here, though Yancy is definitely the _oldest_ one here. There are other kids ranging in age from eighteen—a girl from New York who claims she just needs to get her GED so that her parents, who are pilot hopefuls, will let her join the program—to several toddlers. There are four instructors, and they spend varying amounts of time with each age group on differing subjects. Raleigh and Yancy end up lumped in the same group, the juniors and seniors, and so they share most of their class slots.

After several hours of studying, they’re released with an assignment to work on at home and something to read before they come back. The reading is mostly technical in nature, much of it dealing with engineering and biology, but Raleigh finds that he enjoys it well enough to not mind too much. True, he’s always happier on the nights when they’re given some sort of history reading or when they’re given tactics to analyze because, truthfully, those are the subjects that’d always interested him most back in school—he knows well enough that the program is trying to push them to join one day and that they aren’t at all subtle about it, but he doesn’t mind. Regardless, he and Yancy spend their first few evenings curled up together, a book propped between them, taking turns reading aloud. When they fall asleep, it’s with their limbs tangled together and their breath mingling between them.

 

 

Things get complicated when one of the girls in their school program says something about Yancy, calling him too old to be there with them. Raleigh feels a growl burble up in his chest, and it’s only when Yancy’s hand is pulling back against his shoulder that he realizes that he’d actually started stalking toward the girl in question.

“Rals,” his brother hisses at him, voice low, words colored by a tone of almost desperate insistence that Raleigh’s never heard before, “calm the fuck down, _now_. You’re _shifting_.”

The words catch Raleigh off guard, and he jerks back, only then realizing that the subtle writhing sensation that’d been underneath his skin when he’d accidentally burned down the house— _their_ house—is curling within his belly. He closes his eyes, the irises hot against the inside of his eyelids, and wills the anger to subside. Only when his guts stop moving and he feels like he’s actually in control again, knows he’s _probably_ not going to hurt anything, does he open his eyes again.

“C’mon, kiddo,” Yancy murmurs to him, and Raleigh allows himself to be led back to a corner of the room where they sit side by side against the wall, thighs brushing when either of them moves, math problems spread out on the table they’ve claimed as their own. After a few minutes, the younger Becket becomes aware of his brother’s hand on his thigh, grip tight but still comforting. In response, he gently, subtly, knocks their shoulders together.

The way the frown on his brother’s face abates somewhat at the action, a smile threatening to pull at the corners of his lips, unclenches the knot in Raleigh’s stomach.

 

 

“I think we need to teach you how to control your shifts,” Yancy says that evening, after they’ve finished their reading assignment for the night—something about creating artificial genomes from silicon instead of carbon. Raleigh rolls over onto his other side until he’s facing his brother, their bare legs tangling in the process.

“I think you’re right,” he concedes, laughter bubbling up into his throat when Yancy’s face transforms to one of confusion. “What? Thought I’d argue?” he prods at his brother’s chest with a grin he knows the other blond can see in the dark. “Well, newsflash, Yance: I nearly _attacked_ a snot-nosed little brat who couldn’t keep her mouth shut. I…” he trails off for a moment, trying to find the words to express what he’s feeling, eyes dropping to Yancy’s chest. Eventually, he settles with simply saying, “I don’t want to do that again.”

There’s a thread of fear that winds through him as the words slip out, and he can almost hear the way it stitches itself into the last word. Yancy hears it too, Raleigh _knows_ he does, because he runs a palm soothingly down the skin of the younger Becket’s stomach, fingertips skating the elastic waistband of Raleigh’s underwear.

“Alright, Rals,” his brother’s voice is soothing, warm puffs of breath in his hair. “We’ll start tomorrow, okay?”

Questions immediately spring up in Raleigh’s mind. For example, where the hell is Yancy planning on doing this? The Academy might be mostly made of metal and cinder blocks, but that doesn’t mean the whole structure is fireproof. However, he ignores them in favor of drifting into sleep.

 

 

At breakfast the next morning, Trevin is giving Bruce a neck massage as the older twin rolls his head from side to side, muttering, “God, Trev, it’s only been a few months since our last deployment. How the hell are we this out of shape already?”

The words earn him a snort from his brother, and Trevin digs in with what seems to be a bit more force than is strictly necessary as the snort transforms into a laugh.

“Quit your whining, old man. Just be grateful I haven’t abandoned your decrepit ass somewhere yet.”

However, before the two of them can continue their banter, Yancy cuts in.

“Rals ‘n I wanna go hiking for a bit later today. Is that okay?”

Both twins turn to blink at them, surprise clear.

“I mean,” Trevin eventually pipes up, breaking the silence, “sure, but…”

“Why’re you bothering to ask?” Bruce questions them. “You boys can pretty much do whatever you want—you know that, right? All we ask is that you’re back in your room by midnight and that you go to school.”

“And that you don’t miss dinner,” Trevin adds.

“And that you don’t miss dinner, right,” Bruce agrees, nodding.

“Right, cool, thanks guys,” Yancy says, smiling. “C’mon Rals, let’s go pack then get to class. Sound good?”

“Don’t forget to pack windbreakers!” Trevin shouts after them. “It’s supposed to get cold!”

“Thanks, Trev,” Yancy calls back, waving a hand over his shoulder.

 

 

Though it does get cold the higher up the mountains they get, the windbreakers end up being almost completely useless.

“Strip,” Yancy orders him, which at first just makes Raleigh tilt his head and give his brother a side-eyed expression.

“Uh,” he mutters, raising an eyebrow, “I thought we were gonna save that stuff until we were both ready?”

“No, you doof,” Yancy chides him, chuckling softly. “If you shift while wearing your clothes you’re gonna shred them. Remember the night at the house? How my shirt was pretty much destroyed?”

Raleigh blinks once, twice, then shakes his head. “I, uh, I was more paying attention to the fact that you’d just, y’know,” he shrugs, gesturing between them, “grown wings and scales and blasted the roof out with white fire.”

“Silver fire,” Yancy corrects him with a smirk before growing serious again. “But seriously, Rals, strip.” He tilts his head to the side, considering, then adds, “You can keep your underwear on if you really want. But I’m not responsible for what happens to them.”

Raleigh keeps his boxers. After all, it might be the middle of the summer, but it’s still Alaska and they’re still on the side of a fucking mountain.

The first thing Yancy teaches him is how to ignore things like cold, heat, and small amounts of pain.

“We actually have a pretty high pain tolerance,” he explains, “and things like this,” he gestures around at the slightly frigid environment, a chill wind blowing through the leaves that summons goosebumps to Raleigh’s skin, “are nothing at all. We can heal from burns, frostbite; you name it. So a cool afternoon is hardly an annoyance.”

“Easy for you to say,” Raleigh mutters, clutching his arms around him. Yancy just laughs.

“One day, kid, I’ll bring you out here in the middle of a snowstorm, and it won’t phase you at all.”

Raleigh just nods his head, making sure to side-eye his brother to let the older blond know just how likely he thinks such a thing is.

 

 

The first two hours are frustratingly unproductive.

Yancy yells at Raleigh to concentrate, to stop blocking himself off, which just makes Raleigh yell back that he’s not _trying_ to block anything, that he’s _actually_ trying to concentrate like Yancy is telling him to. After another twenty minutes of back and forth, though, with Raleigh standing in the forest and feeling foolish as he closes his eyes and tries to ignore the way his toes have gone numb against the cold earth, Yancy finally snaps.

“ _Fine_ ,” he yells when Raleigh makes a soft, frustrated sound and proclaims that it’s still not working, “we’ll do it the hard way, then.”

“Hard wa—?” Raleigh manages to get out, opening his eyes in confusion at his brother’s words, and then he’s consumed by fire.

He has a split second to see Yancy facing him—completely nude, palms outstretched, silver scales crawling up to cover his fingers and eyes glowing neon blue—before his brother’s silver fire is leaping towards him in a wide jet, roaring as it devours the air. Raleigh instinctively raises his arms to shield himself, feels the skin burn and blister within the space of a second. He tries to cry out, both in pain and surprise, but finds that he suddenly can’t. Instead, a hoarse, high shriek emerges from between his lips.

Everything goes dark.

He wonders for a moment if he’s blacked out, if his brother has _killed_ him, but he immediately dismisses the latter thought because Yancy would _never_ do that, and then dismisses the former because he’s still thinking, still quite aware. He can still faintly hear the roar of fire as it rushes past him. He tries to make a noise, to call out, and instead he only manages to make a sound similar to the one he made before, except this time it’s more of a low, throaty growl than anything else.

‘ _Rals? You in there?_ ’

The words sing through his mind as the roar of flames stops. Raleigh makes another shrieking noise in surprise, somehow louder than before, and whirls around, trying to locate the source.

‘ _Rals, it’s me_ ,’ the voice— _Yancy’s_ voice—says calmly, like a whisper at the back of his consciousness. ‘ _I need you to relax your wings. Can you do that for me, kiddo?_ ’

‘ _What the—_ ’ he thinks frantically, ‘ _Yancy? What the hell is going on—why did you do that? How—what the—why are we—are we talking_ telepathically _?_ ’

Raleigh nearly falls on his ass when a chuckle reverberates through his brain, and he _knows_ that laugh, has heard it hundreds of times before, and hearing it play back in his mind like a memory yet so much _clearer_ is strange on a level that makes his head hurt.

‘ _Yeah. Perk of being related, I think Mom told me. Surprise? Anyway, kiddo, I need you to relax your wings. Is that okay?_ ’

‘ _I don’t know how—_ wings _?_ ’

For some reason, the knowledge that wings are involved—even though he’d _known_ that; after all, he’d seen them on Yancy—makes his knees threaten to give way as a dull kind of shock courses through him.

Which is when light invades his world once more, causing him to blink rapidly even as he tries to stabilize himself.

The ground around him is scorched to a dark black, flecks of white-gray ash covering everything. Looking back to check on the trees behind him, Raleigh catches sight of something bright out of the corner of his eye. He twists faster, and whatever it is it flings itself outward, pulling at a spot just beside his shoulder blade as it does so.

It’s his wing.

His _golden_ wing.

‘ _Holy_ shit _,_ ’ he thinks, which gets him another mental chuckle. On instinct—because it’s not like he can _hear_ which direction the sound comes from—he whirls around, gaze landing on his brother. At least, he’s pretty sure it’s his brother.

The night Yancy’d flown them out of the burning remnants of their house, Raleigh hadn’t really gotten a good look at his brother, only having enough time to see that his face and arms were covered in the silver scales and that he had wings before the younger blond’s mind had completely shut down. Also, his brother had still been wearing clothes then.

Fully revealed, his brother’s transformation is _beautiful_.

Yancy stands just as tall as he had before—his modest five-foot-ten—and from his back extend a pair of now-folded wings. Judging from their size, Raleigh guesses that they’d probably be about twenty feet wide, fully extended. Silver scales cover every inch of what used to be skin, and, to Raleigh’s great disappointment, it seems that the scales form a protective layer over his brother’s crotch when he’s transformed, making him look like he’s wearing a scaled jumpsuit and giving him the appearance of being almost sexless. Everything else, though, appears to be relatively unchanged. The jumpsuit metaphor, he thinks to himself, is fairly apt, as the scales outline his brother’s form and reflect the light off the numerous dips and valleys of the older Becket’s muscles—which, Raleigh knows from firsthand experience, have toned up significantly since they arrived here and began their workouts with the Gages. He looks like he’s covered in the fragments of a shattered mirror. His facial features, though, those cheekbones Raleigh’s spent more than one evening worshiping with his lips and tongue, are almost completely unchanged. The storm-gray eyes Raleigh’s come to know and love, though, are gone, replaced by bright, glowing blue eyes that are slitted from top to bottom, and his brother’s hair has vanished as well.

‘ _Wow,_ ’ Raleigh thinks before he can censor himself, ‘ _you’re_ gorgeous _, Yance._ ’

Across from him, Yancy actually lets out a snorting sort of chuffing sound which the younger Becket assumes is a laugh.

‘ _Kid_ ,’ Yancy thinks at him, ‘ _I wish I could show you what you look like._ ’

Raleigh looks down at himself, a frown pulling itself onto his features. His scales are, unlike his brother’s pure silver, a bright, warm gold. They cover him in much the same fashion as they do Yancy, and, looking down at his hands, he sees that each of his fingers is tipped by a wicked-looking, curved claw that’s maybe a half-inch long. Sure, he can see the way his scales accentuate the build he’s managed to maintain with his exercise routine in school, their hard-looking surface forcing the planes of what were formerly skin into harsh relief, but, well…

‘ _I mean_ ,’ Raleigh thinks, ‘ _I’m okay, I guess?_ ’ Then, as he hears his brother make a snorting sound and start to protest mentally, something occurs to him.

‘ _What color are my eyes?_ ’ he asks, overriding whatever Yancy’d been saying. His brother blinks at him, and then, softly:

‘ _Red. Blood red._ ’

A wave of sadness envelops him, and it takes Raleigh a moment to realize that it’s not his own. Curious, he tries to prod his brother mentally with a wave of confusion. It must work, because Yancy answers him a moment later.

‘ _Your eyes are the same color as Mom’s. She was bronze, but had red eyes. Exactly like yours._ ’

Raleigh can’t think of anything to say except, ‘ _I wish I’d gotten to see her before…_ ’ but cuts the thought off before he can finish. He knows where it leads, and so does his brother; it doesn’t _need_ finishing.

‘ _Me too, Rals,_ ’ Yancy thinks back at him, sadness pulsing between them again. ‘ _Me too._ ’

 

 

‘ _So, uh, Yance?_ ’ Raleigh calls out to his brother a few hours later, the exhilaration from flying—actually _flying_ , never mind that Yancy’d needed to catch him several times—for the first time still singing in his blood. ‘ _How the hell do I get back to being,_ ’ he gestures at himself with one clawed, scale-covered hand, ‘ _not like this?_ ’

‘ _Just relax, like when you’re falling asleep,_ ’ he tells the younger blond. ‘ _It’s simple_. _Close your eyes if you think it’ll help._ ’

‘ _Says the man who can barely get out of bed every morning to the chronic insomniac_ ,’ Raleigh thinks back wryly. ‘ _Thanks for nothing, you useless reptile._ ’ However, he does as instructed, closing his eyes and letting out a breath, resolutely ignoring the mental grumbles Yancy sends his way.

 

 

It takes some work, but eventually, after no more than thirty minutes have passed, Yancy manages to coach him through it.

“Useless reptile my ass, kid,” he mutters when they’re both back to normal and pulling on their clothes to head back. “At least I can fly on my own. And, no, we don’t eat raw fish, so don’t try it.”

“So eels aren’t going to suddenly be the bane of my existence?” Raleigh asks, laughing as he shoves his sweater over his head.

Yancy murmurs something under his breath, and Raleigh gets the distinct impression he probably doesn’t want to know what it is. So, in retaliation, he picks up a nearby pinecone and hurls it as his brother’s head. He misses—his hand-eye coordination is a bit rusty—but only by an inch or so.

Thankfully, Yancy just laughs at him; Raleigh knows from experience that his brother’s two years playing lacrosse have given him an unerringly good aim.

 

 

Raleigh’s underwear is burned beyond recognition. Yancy just snorts and tells him he told him so.

His only consolation is that, now that he’s managed to shift—or rather, Yancy tells him, he’s managed to shift halfway—whatever low-level pain tolerance and healing Yancy’d been talking about seems to have been switched on, and, as a consequence, he doesn’t really feel the cold anymore.

Doesn’t stop his brother from making jokes about his dick freezing off, though.

 

 

The next time they “go hiking,” Yancy teaches Raleigh how to voluntarily shift. He explains that Raleigh’s first shift had been in self defense, and that the older Becket doesn’t want to go throwing around fire every time Raleigh decides he doesn’t want to be stuck in his human form anymore.

Raleigh, wisely, decides to go completely nude this time. It’s an exercise in self control not only because he’s trying to master that slippery, writhing feeling that Yancy tells him is actually his dragon side shifting restlessly beneath the surface, trying to get out, but also because being confronted by a completely nude Yancy is not, well, not what he’s used to. Thus far, they’ve both actually managed to keep most of their clothes on around each other, even when they’re sleeping—at the very least underwear, if nothing else, though one of them is usually wearing a shirt or pants or shorts or _something_ else. His only consolation is that his brother is flushing slightly, too, and Raleigh knows for a fact that it’s not from the cold.

Yancy tries to coax him through the process again, though he has similarly negative results just like last time. The breakthrough actually comes when Raleigh’s patience wears thin again and, snarling, he turns and punches a tree in frustration. Just before he makes contact, though, there’s a strange rippling sensation through his hand and forearm, and his scales and claws spring from underneath his skin. His fist collides with the tree and… keeps going, ploughing a furrow through the pine’s bark and wood as if it were made of jello.

Raleigh blinks down at his hand, feels the same rippling as the scales and claws start to disappear again, and, in a moment of inspiration, he mentally latches on to that feeling, the sensation it causes, and _pulls_.

Golden scales erupt from under his skin over his entire body, and, with a harsh cracking sound, his wings unfold from his back so fast that he nearly falls on his ass.

“Note to self,” Yancy laughs as the younger Becket stumbles. “To get Rals to learn, just have him punch stuff.”

Raleigh tries to bark out a retort, to say that, no, he learns best when Yancy actually _explains_ and that the only reason this’d worked had been dumb luck, but finds that all he can get out is a sort of vaguely annoyed choking sound. Yancy just laughs harder.

“We—we can’t talk when we shift, Rals,” he managed to get out, holding his side as his stomach muscles tense and flutter in time with his laughter. “Although—oh my _god_ —you’re welcome to try any time because that was seriously _hilarious_.”

‘ _Shut up_ ,’ the younger Becket sends to his older brother, the words accompanied with a pulse of annoyance. Yancy just stares at him, and then narrows his eyes slightly, his easy smile stretching into a grin.

“You’re tryin’ t’talk to me, aren’t you? Bad news, kid: I can’t hear you when I’m like this. So, try all you want: not gonna work.”

Raleigh huffs internally for a moment, then lets his eyes slip shut as he focuses, remembering how it felt to grab hold of the… whatever it was under his skin, and instead imagines his internal grip loosening, the sensation falling away. As he does, a shudder runs through his body, and it takes him a moment to realize that it’s because the feeling of his scales slipping back under his skin feels fucking _weird_. Once the golden facets have retreated from his face and throat, he levels Yancy with a glare and says simply, “You suck.”

His brother’s laughter fills the forest.

 

 

Their new routine continues uninterrupted for just over a month—until the end of August. Raleigh and Yancy continue their physical training with the Gages, go to school, do their assigned homework and reading, and then fall asleep in each other’s arms. On the weekends, they go “hiking”—or, as is sometimes the case, “camping”—in order to help Raleigh hone his control.

Trevin and Bruce are, for their part, looking tired as hell—their Ranger training is apparently intense beyond belief—but always greet the Beckets with wide smiles each morning when Raleigh and Yancy knock on their door for their run. They’ve also taken to checking on the boys when they’re doing homework or at school. On one memorable occasion, Trevin, ever the sentimental one of the twins, stands on his toes to place a barely-there kiss on top of each of the Becket’s heads as he and Bruce give them their customary goodbye hugs and hair ruffling. The gesture makes Raleigh flush slightly, because he knows what it means, knows what the fact that he _allows_ it means: knows that the other pair of brothers are rapidly inserting themselves into his life, knows that he’s helpless to stop it, and knows that he _doesn’t care_.

He knows, hell, he _remembers_ that his and Yancy’s adoption is merely a formality, that the Gages aren’t _technically_ his parents. However, in the past two months, they’ve done more to act like father figures than the Becket’s biological father ever had. They make sure Raleigh and Yancy eat properly, they force them to stop during workouts if they think the Beckets are going to hurt themselves, and Bruce has even been known to help them with their homework. It almost alarms Raleigh how quickly he’s adapted to this new sort of life, and he knows for a fact that it _does_ alarm Yancy—Yancy with his almost complete distrust of any authority figure—because his brother is still, even after almost two months, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

After Bruce and Trevin leave the classroom, saying that their break from training is over in five minutes, a girl, no more than six years old, approaches the Beckets.

“Are those your daddies?” she asks them nervously, her voice, coming from behind Raleigh, making the younger blond jump. He turns and considers her, lips thinning, sure Yancy is doing the same out of his line of sight, and actually allows himself to think about the question.

“I don’t know if I’d—” Yancy starts, but Raleigh interrupts his brother with a smile.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding emphatically and leaning down so that he’s at eye level with the girl. “They are.”

Her eyes go wide before a smile, so child-like in its innocence and the way she’s missing her two front teeth, makes her face practically _shine_.

“Having two daddies is the best,” she whispers conspiratorially to them, cupping one hand around her mouth as if to shield her voice from the rest of the room. “I talked to some of the other kids, and they only have _one_ daddy. There’s even a boy who doesn’t have _any_ daddies! He says his mommies take care of him, though.”

And, with that, she skips off back to her table. A hand lands on his shoulder, and Raleigh doesn’t have to look back to know it’s Yancy’s.

“You really feel that way, kid?” There’s a strange note to his brother’s voice that Raleigh doesn’t recognize.

“Yeah, Yance, I… I guess do. They,” he closes his mouth and breathes out forcefully through this nose, brows furrowing together as he organizes his thoughts. “They aren’t Mom, and they aren’t you, but… I dunno,” the younger Becket shrugs, “they’re trying really hard and, y’know, I feel like they’re the first people we’ve been able to really trust since Dad left. They… they just get it, I guess.”

Raleigh shrugs, glancing over his shoulder. “Does that make sense?”

He can’t see his brother’s face, can only see a vague shape that’s bent over slightly at the edge of his vision. After a few moments, the shape moves in a manner that Raleigh assumes is nodding.

“Yeah, kiddo, I… I guess it does.”

 

 

Everything changes when September starts.

That’s because, on the first of September, 2015, Chuck Hansen joins their classroom.

 

 


	6. feet firm, still shaken

Raleigh’s first impression of Chuck when one of the teachers introduces him to the class is that he smells funny. Sort of sharp and biting, like ozone. When the younger Becket mentions it to Yancy, his brother says the same thing, except he adds it’s like ozone dipped in vinegar.

Raleigh’s second impression is that the kid’s eyes are far too haunted for a twelve year old. He glares at anyone who dares get close to him, let alone anyone who tries to talk to him. Instead, he spends his time alone at his table reading a hastily-compiled textbook about the biology of the Kaiju.

Raleigh’s third impression is that Chuck hates both of them. The glare he reserves for the two of them seems especially laced with vitriol, and, though he hasn’t said anything directly to or about either of the Beckets, Raleigh gets the impression that he’s simply decided to loathe them for some reason.

Things get even more complicated when Chuck’s father, Hercules “call me Herc, mate” Hansen, comes to visit his son when the Gages visit Raleigh and Yancy.

Bruce and Trevin, of course, make their way immediately over to where the Beckets are working on their assigned math problems. Raleigh stands, smiling, and wraps Bruce in a hug—he’s closer, so he gets the first hug today—as the older man murmurs, “Hey kid, how’s it going?” in a voice that’s tired but happy. Raleigh opens his mouth to answer but then there’s a hand in his hair, scratching him playfully, and he closes his eyes and leans into the sensation, practically purring. Above him, Bruce giggles softly.

“Alrighty then. Good day?”

Raleigh’s thankful when Trevin pushes Bruce’s hand from his hair with a soft, “Behave, Brucey,” because getting a boner while his adopted dad is hugging him would likely be awkward as fuck and Raleigh just really doesn’t want to go there.

However, it’s when Trevin has dislodged Bruce and is wrapping his arms around Raleigh’s shoulders that the blond catches it. The smell of ozone again, except this time it’s stronger. _Much_ stronger. And much… sweeter. As if it’s been drizzled in an entire vat of honey. He stiffens in Trevin’s grasp, eyes zeroing in on the older man standing beside Chuck with matching light red-brown hair and a jawline that’s reflected on the younger redhead’s face—though it’s only just starting to peek into existence for Chuck. Raleigh shudders in Trevin’s grip, and the older man looks down, concerned, before he turns his head in the same direction as the blond, apparently tracking Raleigh’s gaze.

“Oh, yeah, that’s Herc Hansen,” Trevin explains. “Him and his son Chuck. C’mon, Bruce and I’ll introduce you guys. Chuck’s a bit younger than you two, from what Herc tells us, but, hey, maybe you’ll become friends.”

“No, Trev,” Raleigh says lowly, leaning the side of his head into the brunet’s shoulder, “I don’t think that’s such a—”

But Trevin has already called out to Herc and is gesturing towards Bruce to bring Yancy. Herc, for his part, looks up and then grins, the expression slightly strained. Raleigh can see his gaze flicker from himself to Yancy to the Gages and back again, assessing.

“Bruce, Trevin,” the redheaded man greets them each with a nod, the Australian accent surprising Raleigh; it takes a moment to process, but he realizes that the older man had actually addressed the twins correctly. Herc’s eyes slide off the twins, though, and land more heavily upon the Beckets. The sweet-acrid scent is stronger now that they’re closer, the honey-like undertones changing to something… _purer_ that comes close to obscuring the biting scent of burned air. “These two’re yours, I take it?”

“Yup, in a manner of speaking,” Bruce answers with a smile, and Raleigh can see him nudging Yancy in the ribs playfully. “Herc, this is Yancy and Raleigh Becket,” he gestures to them each in turn, “our adopted sons. We found them and Trevin just gave me those puppy dog eyes—you know the ones, and stop giving me that look Trev, you know you totally do it—and, well… here we are. Though, I’ve gotta say, some days it feels like they’re more like adults than we’ve ever been.”

That gets a laugh out of the Australian, and he hauls Chuck forward. The redheaded boy glares up at his father before he redirects his glare onto the Beckets, ignoring the Gages as he crosses his arms at them.

“This’s Chuck, m’son,” Herc glances down and ruffles the kid’s hair, which earns him a scowl. “Chuck, say hi.”

“Hey,” the younger Hansen growls sullenly, voice barely audible as his jaw clenches around the word. Herc sends them all an apologetic look.

“Kid’s been sick the past few weeks since Scott ‘n I arrived—”

“‘Cause it’s bloody _cold_ ,” Chuck interjects, still not dropping the glare he seems to have reserved for Raleigh and Yancy.

“—‘n, well, yeah, he’s been holed up in our room the whole time.”

“Who was watching him?” Raleigh pipes up, causing the older men to all look at him. He blushes under the weight of their combined gazes and ducks his head. “Sorry, right, none of my business.”

“Nah, s’fine, mate,” Herc says with a laugh. “And, truthfully, no one ‘cept me ‘n Scott when we can catch a break.”

“Oh, come on, Herc,” Raleigh glances up at Bruce where he’s frowning at the Australian, “he’s been sick the whole time? You could’ve asked me or Trev once you got to know us. Martinez can stand to miss one of us for a lesson or two, ‘specially if there’s a sick kid involved.”

“‘M not a baby,” Chuck mutters, “I don’t need you arseho—”

“—What Chuck means to say,” Herc overrides his son with a grimace and a palm over the younger’s mouth; Raleigh’s gaze is fixated on Chuck where the redhead has clearly started licking his dad’s palm to try and get him to move his hand, but Herc is resolutely ignoring it, “is that that’s really nice, mate, ‘n I might just take you up on it one day.”

The younger Hansen makes a sound of protest beneath the hand, muffled curse words audible to the blond’s enhanced hearing. However, Herc’s fingers flex, and Raleigh’s could swear he hears a soft, electric hum before the sweet smell coming off the older Australian intensifies for a moment. Chuck falls suddenly silent, as if his vocal cords have simply ceased to work, and his eyes go wide in surprise.

“And now, if y’don’t mind,” Herc begins to steers Chuck towards the door, hand still over the younger redhead’s mouth, “I think Chuck might be feelin’ a bit off, so I’m gonna get him to our room, let him lie down for a bit. Raleigh, Yancy,” he says—Raleigh enjoys the way his accent makes him stretch out his name, like ‘Raah-leigh’—as he nods to the two Beckets, “was nice meetin’ you both. Bruce, Trev, see you in class.”

And, with that, he turns and walks out the door, arm now slung limply over his son’s shoulders, hand dangling. Raleigh turns back toward Trevin and opens his mouth to speak when, suddenly, there’s a soft voice in his ear.

It’s Herc’s voice.

“Beckets,” the gruff, Australian rumble murmurs as if from right beside him, and Raleigh’s confused until he sees the same mystified expression on Yancy’s face. “Sorry for the shock, but I couldn’t speak openly in front of the twins. I think we should talk. Nineteen-thirty, same classroom, that work for you boys? Nod if yes.”

Yancy’s wide-eyed expression meets his own, and Raleigh can feel anxiety dripping down his spine and tightening his guts. What the _hell_ is going on? He wishes he could speak to Yancy without being overheard. Unfortunately, he thinks wryly, shifting right now might panic more than a few people, Bruce and Trevin included.

In the end, though, a quick glance at Yancy shows him that his brother is feeling the same curiosity that’s swirling in Raleigh’s chest, all the evidence he needs found in the way the older Becket’s eyebrow is raised ever so slightly.

Raleigh nods. Across from him, he sees Yancy doing the same.

“Right, good. Til then, boys.”

 

 

The meeting starts off abominably.

Upon entering the now-empty classroom, the first thing Raleigh notices is that Herc is definitely here. The smell that seems to wrap itself around the man like a blanket of snow pervades the room. The second thing he notices is the sound of the door swinging shut behind them with a heavy _bang_ , the smell intensifying just like before. Whirling around, Raleigh sees Herc standing against the wall, a palm outstretched towards the door. The door that is at least fifteen feet from Herc. The door that had just shut, seemingly of its own accord. In an instant, Yancy is between Raleigh and the Australian, snarling.

“Sorry ‘bout that, boys,” Herc says, smiling apologetically, “but I know dragons don’t like their business discussed with outsiders, so I figured I’d seal the room. That alright with y’both?”

There’s a moment when the word ‘dragons’ lingers in the air, and then Yancy snarls again, louder this time; Raleigh’s almost certain if he could see him, his brother’s eyes would be blazing bright blue. The older blond shifts slightly, arms swinging slightly looser, and Raleigh watches as silver scales peek from underneath Yancy’s skin, his claws extending from underneath his fingernails. He doesn’t raise his hands, though, and Raleigh has a feeling that’s only because he’s on the defensive: after all, they know next to nothing about this man except that his name is Herc Hansen and that their adopted fathers trust him. Knowing Yancy the way he does, Raleigh’s certain the other blond won’t attack something unless he’s sure he knows what it is and how to take it down.

So, instead of asking what Herc wants—because he’s sure they’ll find that out in a moment, anyway—Raleigh asks, “What are you? How did you _do_ that? And how do you know what we are?”

Herc’s eyes, which had widened in surprise at Yancy’s actions, return to something resembling normalcy.

“What, you mean you couldn’t smell it on me?” the older man asks, frowning slightly. “I’ve been told magic smells right strange to dragons.”

“Magic?” Raleigh repeats, brows furrowing. “ _That’s_ what that is?”

Herc’s frown deepens.

“Just how old are you boys, anyway? I mean really?”

“Don’t answer him,” Yancy says immediately, his right hand moving, palm down, in a silencing gesture. The words get an eye roll and a smile from the Australian, which Raleigh finds rather strange considering that Yancy’s got his claws out, scales slowly creeping up the back of his neck and further up his arms.

However, the tone of Yancy’s voice when the other teen tries to keep him quiet gets under Raleigh’s skin, and he frowns at his brother’s back before he continues speaking to Herc.

“Magic?” he repeats. “What are you, a wizard?” He pauses before asking, genuinely curious, “Are wizards even a thing, Yance?”

Yancy doesn’t get a chance to answer, because Herc outright _laughs_ at that.

“No, ‘m not a wizard. No fancy wands or incantations or any of that shit.” He lifts one hand up in a lazy gesture, bringing it level with his eyes. For the second time in as many minutes, the scent—of magic, apparently—intensifies, and one of the chairs next to Raleigh begins to float about a half foot off the ground until Herc drops his hand back to his side, the chair bouncing slightly but ultimately landing upright when it falls back to the floor.

“See?” The older man continues, probably grinning, Raleigh thinks, at the stupefied expressions both of them are wearing. “Mage. Not a wizard. Wizard could’a levitated every damn chair in here at once. Me? I can throw one of ‘em across the room, sure, probably crush it, but too many at once’ll give me a headache like you wouldn’t even believe.”

When Yancy growls again at the proclamation of Herc being able to crush a chair, the redhead’s smile transforms into a frown.

“What? Y’think I’d actually do that to you two?” He shakes his head. “Nah, mate, too few of us left. The supernatural’s dying out in the modern age. Bloodlines’re getting too diluted to be of any use, and the surge of hunters in the early nineteenth century pretty much damned us from the outset. I mean, Chuck might have the spark in him to use it one day, but, I mean, we won’t know for ‘nother year or two. Besides, y’know,” the redhead raises an eyebrow, still frowning, “s’not like it’d work if I tried to do anythin’ to you two, anyway. Magic and dragons ‘n all that.”

“Wouldn’t know,” Yancy mutters lowly. “Haven’t met a magic user before.”

Herc blinks at them once, twice, forehead smoothing.

“I s’ppose I’ll just ask again, then: exactly how old _are_ you boys, anyway?”

“I’m sixteen,” Raleigh answers, with earns him an annoyed glance from his brother, “and Yancy’s nineteen.”

A choking noise works its way out of the Australian’s mouth, and his eyes widen.

“You’re _children_.”

“Uh, yeah,” Raleigh can’t quite manage to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “Bruce and Trev did adopt us and everything…”

“Well, yeah, I mean,” Herc flounders for a moment before he swallows, blinks once, eyes settling back on Raleigh with a kind of weight the blond can’t interpret, “I thought you two were pretendin’ or something. Dragons don’t necessarily look their real age, after all. But, if you’re actually just _kids_ …?” He trails off, then finally murmurs, “If Chuck does end up with… this,” he gestures at himself, “in him, too, at least he’ll have someone who’s really his age to talk to ‘bout it, I suppose.“

Yancy casts a look back at Raleigh, brows twitching together.

“What?” the older man asks them. “I saw that. What was that?”

They’re both silent for a moment before Yancy turns back towards Herc and opens his mouth to speak, words neutral and careful.

“If what you smell like is magic, then Chuck’s definitely got something like that, for sure. I mean, his smells kind of like yours, but not as… it’s different,” he finishes lamely. However, his brother quirks his head to the side, and Raleigh can almost feel the thought forming in the other Becket’s mind.

“So, if you’ve got magic,” Yancy hedges, “and Chuck might, too, and you can somehow tell we’re dragons, does that mean Chuck can, too? And is that why he kept glaring at me and Rals all day? And—actually, how the hell does that even _work_? How _did_ you know?”

Herc just shrugs.

“M’wife was one, so I know what dragons, uh, feel like, I suppose? I dunno,” he shakes his head, “it’s just a feeling. A sort of ‘other,’ I guess. If you’re right, kid probably just doesn’t know _what_ you are, just knows you’re different somehow. I can talk to him about it, if y’want. I’d,” Herc scratches his arm, forearm crossing his body, “I’d really like us to get along. Dragons and mages have a bad history, yeah, but I figure all this” he gestures around them, and Raleigh gets the distinct impression he means more than the empty classroom, “is more important.”

They stand in silence for a few seconds, the Australian’s gaze shifting between the two of them. Eventually, Yancy’s scales retreat under his skin, claws shrinking back into his fingertips as he shifts his stance to one that’s more relaxed. Tension he hadn’t known he’d been holding onto drains from Raleigh’s spine.

“Yeah, sure,” Yancy answers, “that sounds good.”

His brother’s smile, when Raleigh manages to get an oblique look at it, is blinding. And it’s completely real. Because, once again, they’ve found someone else who understands.

They’re not as alone as they thought they were.

 

 

Raleigh jerks to wakefulness, heart beating wildly as he pants into the darkness, images of red gems blinking in the sunlight still burned into his retinas and the sound of a defiant scream still ringing in his ears. Beside him, he hears Yancy do the same with a harsh intake of breath, the sheets rustling over his brother’s body as the older Becket sits upright in bed. The clock set into the wall console tells Raleigh that it’s almost two in the morning.

“Rals?” Yancy whispers as the younger Becket tries to get his breathing under control, “you too?”

“Yeah,” Raleigh whispers back, swallowing loudly. “You saw it, too?”

“Yeah. God damn it, I thought we were done with this shit.” The other blond heaves a sigh before finally muttering, “So I guess that just leaves the question of—”

“Why the hell was there another dragon there,” Raleigh whispers, finishing his brother’s thought, “and who the hell was it?”

Yancy apparently doesn’t have an answer for him, because they sit in the darkness, in silence, as Raleigh tries to regain control of his heartbeat. However, once the blood is no longer rushing past his ears, something catches his attention.

“Yance?” He murmurs into the dark, straining his ears. “Did you hear that?”

His brother is silent for a few seconds before he murmurs back, “No, I don’t hear—”

The distinct sound of a soft moan, nearly inaudible, interrupts him.

“—okay, forget that, what the hell was that?” Yancy finishes, whispering harshly.

Raleigh shushes his brother as quietly as he can, ears straining. He’s pretty sure the sound came from somewhere nearby, but he’s not sure. When Yancy draws in a breath to speak, Raleigh covers his mouth with a hand. He can feel the disgruntled pout the older teen is making against the skin of his palm, but ignores it.

Another moan creeps out of the darkness, making Raleigh jump slightly. He sees his brother’s eyes flare to life, beacons of dim blue amidst the black, the points of light turning towards the door that’s adjoining their room.

“No way…” Yancy breathes softly. Confusion ricochets around Raleigh’s mind until he actually _listens_ to the moans, which had picked up in frequency, and realizes that there are actual _words_ hidden within them. They’re soft, would be completely impossible to hear if not for their enhanced hearing, but they’re definitely there.

“Oh, fuck, fuck me Trev,” come the whispered words, followed quickly by the incrementally deeper voice of Trevin telling Bruce to keep as quiet as he can before the older brother continues, undeterred, “yeah, right fucking there, oh _fuck_ yeah.”

Raleigh looks back towards his brother, his entire face heating, and can’t help but notice the way Yancy’s face is lit slightly by a ruddy glow; apparently, his eyes have shifted, too. He wants to turn his ears off, feels like they’re intruding on something private. Now that he can hear them, not even the rushing of blood past his ears can drown out the hushed words

“Oh god, not gonna last lil’ bro, not gonna— _oh fuck_.”

The moans and frantic whimpering that’s now audible increase in pitch for a few moments before there’s quiet and then the soft rumble of Trevin’s voice.

“Love you, Bruce.”

“Love you too, Trev.”

In the silence that follows, Raleigh feels like he’s locked in place, like someone has frozen him into a block of ice. He stares hard at his brother, not knowing what to say, blinking rapidly to try and shift his eyes back. Just after he succeeds, the blue of Yancy’s eyes disappears as well, and there’s a rustling sound from the older Becket that moves over top of Raleigh’s form and towards the door that links their rooms. After a moment, the sound of his brother’s feet on the metal floor moves back towards the bed, and Raleigh scoots over to allow Yancy to crawl in beside him.

“Love you, Rals,” Yancy whispers, the words holding an odd ring to them. Instead of answering verbally, not trusting his voice, Raleigh leans over to plant a soft kiss on his brother’s lips, missing on his first try and accidentally kissing the older Becket on the nose. The chuckle that gets out of both of them as Raleigh properly slots their mouths together alleviates some of the tension in the room, and they both manage to somehow sink into sleep again.

 

 

When he wakes up, Raleigh sees that Yancy’d stuffed a spare blanket along the bottom of the adjoining door. He supposes they’ll know whether or not it works later, though, for now, they move it back out of the way to avoid suspicion. They talk about it in quick, hushed tones, coming to the conclusion that it’s the Gage’s business and that, really, who are they to judge?

Their run and work out with the Gages is mostly silent, with the older men’s attempts at trying to engage the Beckets in conversation mostly falling flat. When they do answer, Raleigh and Yancy tend to provide monosyllabic answers. Raleigh wishes he could somehow not see the worry in Trevin’s eyes, or the confusion in Bruce’s, but he doesn’t know what to do about them, either. When they all get breakfast together, before they leave to go to training, Raleigh asks Yancy if he can get him another banana. The older Becket gives him a level look, as if to say ‘I know what you’re doing,’ but does as he’s asked.

The Gages, of course, jump on the opportunity. They both start to speak, questions of “What’s wrong?” and “Did we do something wrong?” falling from both their lips, but Raleigh holds up a hand to silence them.

“We know,” he says, shortly.

When all he gets are two blank, confused stares, he takes a deep breath and adds, “About you two. We heard you. Last night.”

Trevin seems to almost visibly deflate while Bruce lets out a soft, “ _Fuck_ …” After a moment, though, they look at each other, swapping looks of grim determination, before they look back to him.

“We’re sorry you have to find out like this, Raleigh,” Trevin begins.

“And if you and Yancy don’t want anything to do with us anymore,” Bruce adds, “well… We’d understand.”

Something rises up in Raleigh’s throat, cold and sour, and he has to swallow it down. He can suddenly feel every inch of his body, the hard metal of the seat underneath him, the edges of his fork where they’re digging into his fingers, the utensil still poised above his sorry excuse for waffles.

‘ _What the hell?_ ’ he thinks to himself, and takes the plunge.

“It’s fine, really,” he says softly, ice solidifying in his veins with each word. “Yance ‘n I’d be complete hypocrites to hate you for what you have.”

The moment between them stretches further and further, all the air in Raleigh’s lungs freezing as time itself seems to crystallize into spider webs of causality before it cracks.

“…What?” Bruce eventually asks. “Are you saying you two…?”

“Not yet, no,” Raleigh answers lowly. “Yance wants to wait ‘til I’m 18 before we take things further. But, I mean, we…” he takes a breath to steady his words, nerves trying to squeeze his throat shut, “we love each other.”

There’s another moment of silence during which the three of them stare at each other assessingly. Raleigh wants to duck his head, wants to just hide away. It’s one thing for Bruce and Trevin to be okay with that they, themselves are doing—and it’s not that much of a stretch for Raleigh, either, considering that he’s already come to think of them as his parents—it’s another entirely to accept something similar between two brothers who are three years apart in age, one of whom isn’t even legal yet. He knows that any appearance of doubt, of anything that shows that he isn’t one hundred percent committed to this thing with Yancy, could easily tip the balance from their favor. So he stares at them head-on, eyes watering as he tries to keep himself from blinking excessively.

“Hey Rals,” Yancy says nonchalantly, breaking the moment as he drops two bananas onto Raleigh’s plate and takes his seat, “gotcha something, kiddo. Had to fight a few dozen people to get to the counter, but, in the end, I was victorious.”

“Thanks Yance,” Raleigh tells his brother, turning slightly towards the older blond and smiling. He doesn’t miss the way, when he peels the fruit and takes a bite out of it, Yancy’s eyes stray to his lips. Apparently, neither does Trevin.

“You can kiss the taste off his lips back in your room, Yancy,” the younger twin says with a smirk. “Or lick it off, if that’s your thing.”

The choking sound Yancy makes coupled with the look on his face simply adds to the soaring, light feeling gliding through Raleigh’s chest. Because, even though they haven’t said it in as many words, the Gages have effectively said they don’t care.

Someone knows about them and doesn’t care. Accepts them, even.

It’s the lightest Raleigh’s felt in a long time.

 

 

Unlike most days, the Gages walk them to class that morning. They both ruffle Raleigh’s hair, making the younger Becket squeak indignantly, then give the two teens especially tight hugs and wide smiles before they walk away.

 

 

Chuck walks up to the two of them during their lunch break, a considering look on his face. Raleigh just blinks at the redhead and how he no longer seems any different now, the smell of ozone gone, and he sees Yancy cross his arms at the Australian’s tense demeanor.

“M’old man told me to give you this,” he mutters through clenched teeth, holding a folded piece of paper out towards them. “Told me why you two feel so weird. Said it’d get better eventually. Sorry ‘bout yesterday.”

The paper is a letter, explaining that Herc’d fashioned a rudimentary concealment spell into the I.D. tags Chuck wears about his neck, and that the older Hansen had done the same thing to his own dog tags.

‘ _So if you smell anything, it isn’t us_ ,’ he’d finished, making Raleigh snort with laughter. When he looks up from the letter, it’s to see Chuck eyeing them, brows still furrowed.

“Are either of you bludgers any good at math?”

Even though math is likely his least favorite subject, Raleigh can see how hard the younger teen is trying, and, apparently, so can Yancy. They spend the rest of the day doing calculus together, heads bowed together as they scribble down lines of numbers and variables. More often than not, though, it will be Chuck helping the Beckets with their problem sets.

 

 

The day that Bruce and Trevin drift for the first time, the twins kiss in the cafeteria in the middle of dinner. It’s the first time Raleigh’s seen them kiss in public and he and Yancy end up staring at them in shock. The twins have snuck in a few pecks when it’s just the four of them, and the Beckets haven’t been shy about doing the same, but this is completely new. The twins pull back as one, staring at each other, eyes comically wide.

“Did we just—”

“—I, yeah, shit, what, _fuck_ —”

Someone catcalls at them from across the cafeteria, while someone else—a tech, probably—calls out in heavily accented English, “Yeah! Get some!”

The twins blush identical shades of red, ducking their heads, but Raleigh doesn’t miss the way their hands link under the table.

 

 

When Raleigh later asks them what it was like—drifting—they both give him a sort of wistful look.

“It’s like being connected to someone just as intimately as when you’re having sex,” Trevin finally says after a moment’s consideration.

“More than that, even!” Bruce chimes in, taking a bite of his food and chewing on it as he gesticulates with his free hand. “It’s… it’s like the border between your mind and the other person’s just… isn’t there anymore. You’re like one person, one mind, in two bodies. It’s like you’re buried so deeply in each other that nothing else matters, so long as you can stay like that, you can stay together, forever.”

“So,” the younger Becket asks slowly, “how do you deal with coming out of it?”

The twins exchange a glance, before they turn back to him and both shrug before Bruce breaks out giggles, the scar above his eye making a crease as his eyebrows shift.

“You probably don’t want to know the answer to that,” he manages to get out, sending the blond a pointed look and a smirk.

Raleigh drops it.

 

 

The Gages graduate on Yancy’s twentieth birthday. On the same day, they’re also informed that there’s a Jaeger currently under construction—Romeo Blue, it’s being called—that will be theirs as soon as it’s built. They celebrate by taking the Beckets down to the party being thrown in their and the Hansens’ honor in the mess—Scott and Herc had been assigned a Jaeger under construction as well: Lucky Seven. Throughout the night, they even hand the two brothers small sips of alcohol under the table. Afterward, the very drunk Gages are led back to their room by the Beckets, Raleigh supporting Bruce, Yancy supporting Trevin. The two brunets giggle like school girls when they reach their door, Bruce leaning down to say, “Your daddies are gonna fuck like bunnies tonight, Raleigh,” before placing a wet kiss on his cheek and giggling harder. Trevin snorts at the sight.

“Ignore him,” he murmurs conspiratorially to the Beckets while Yancy is putting in their lock code. “He’s too drunk to even get it up.”

“Hey! Which of us is older, eh Trevy?”

“Oh yeah? And which of us _really_ enjoys taking it up the—”

“Oookay then,” Raleigh interrupts their drunken ramblings, “let’s remember that we’re in the middle of the hallway, yeah? Okay? Inside voices.” He sends Yancy a look that he hopes conveys clearly ‘ _Please help dad and daddy are talking about sex what do I do?_ ’

When Yancy finally manages to get the door open, he and Raleigh both unceremoniously dump Bruce and Trevin on their bed.

“We love you both so much, y’boys know that, right?” Trevin slurs, dragging out the “s” sounds. “We really, really, _really_ do. Thanks f’r bein’ there f’r us…”

Yancy shakes his head at the drunken pair fondly as they slowly position themselves until they’re spooning, though Trevin, who’s acting as the big spoon, has his head just below Bruce’s shoulder blades instead of by his neck and his arms are around the other man’s thighs instead of his waist.

“We love you too,” the older Becket mutters, leaning down to brush a strand of hair from the already-snoring Bruce’s face almost fondly while Raleigh watches, nodding at his brother’s words. “Both of us.”

 

 

Just over two weeks later, Herc and Scott receive Lucky Seven. Or, more to the point, they’re relocated to the new Hong Kong Shatterdome to receive Lucky. Raleigh and Yancy both hug Chuck goodbye when the three of them leave, forcing the redhead to agree to call them when he gets the time. The classroom seems somehow empty without Chuck there, despite the kid’s largely silent and brooding demeanor.

They don’t talk about it.

Chuck doesn’t call.

 

 

Four days after Raleigh turns seventeen, Romeo Blue arrives at Kodiak Island. The Gages fall in love with her instantly, and they take Raleigh and Yancy on a tour of her. The younger Becket is in awe of the giant machine, feeling like an ant before the behemoth. The conn pod is like a dream come true, all flashing lights and holographic displays. Staring at the two harnesses that will house the two men who are coming to mean more and more to him with each passing day, though, Raleigh is overcome by the thought that the two of them seem almost tiny in comparison to the rest of the Jaeger.

When the twins test pilot Romeo, Raleigh cheers along with the rest of the academy who have all turned out to watch, Yancy’s shout the only one among them that rivals his own, as the blue and gold Jaeger lifts its fists to its chest, hydraulics and engines hissing and whirring mechanically.

“Oh my god, guys,” Bruce tells them later, after he and his brother have been stripped of their drivesuits, “it was _incredible_. You can actually _feel_ her when you’re piloting. It’s…” he trails off, seemingly at a loss for words as he flails his arms around.

“It’s like you’re on top of the world,” Trevin says, grinning at his brother’s antics before he fixes the Beckets with an intent stare. “It’s feeling like you don’t have to hide anymore. Like we can _do_ something.”

 

 

As it turns out, the Gages get their chance to “do something” only a few weeks later. The Kaiju—codename Hardship—is already to Sanak Island and heading straight for them when the call comes in from the Hong Kong LOCCENT chief in charge of monitoring the Breach for the night.

Raleigh is awakened by the sounds of shouting and Bruce and Trevin both swearing loudly as they’re roused from sleep, the words carrying through the door. He’s shocked to complete wakefulness when Bruce comes through the door connecting their rooms, eyes wide and wearing nothing but a pair of pants, and wraps both Raleigh and Yancy in a shaky hug.

“We love you boys,” he tells them softly, low voice not masking the quaver of fear; for a moment, Raleigh’s almost as terrified as the brunet looks. “Please don’t forget that.”

“Bruce, let’s go!” Trevin shouts from the doorway, pulling a shirt on hastily. “We’ve got a job to do.”

Bruce gives them one final squeeze before he runs back to his room, throwing on a shirt and dashing out the door.

 

 

Raleigh and Yancy both watch the progress of the fight from LOCCENT, the chief tech for the Academy’s command center—a short, dark-haired Russian woman named Vera—calling out a constant stream of information. Raleigh’s attention is barely on her, though, instead it’s split between the holographic displays, one of which shows a green dot labeled ROMEO and a red dot labeled KA-02 dancing around each other just offshore of Chirikof Island, the other of which is showing the twins’ biometrics and the status of Romeo. Bruce and Trevin’s voices filter through to them constantly, the pilots keeping in constant contact with LOCCENT.

Raleigh nearly screams when the twins open fire with their long-range weapons, the sounds of the Gatling guns embedded in Romeo’s chest almost deafening through the comms, and the Kaiju rushes towards them.

He _does_ scream—well, makes a sort of distressed whimpering sound, really—as patches on the holographic Jaeger model turn red, indicating damage, though most of it is minor, a watching tech assures him, because it’s not blinking between red and yellow. However, what nearly breaks him completely is the sound of Bruce’s pained cry, followed almost immediately by the right arm of the homunculus representing him—thankfully not his piloting side—turning red as well. Summary information starts flowing over the screen—broken ulna, fractured radius—before a shrill alarm sounds, indicating that the Gages are falling out of alignment. Somehow, they manage to stay focused long enough for Trevin to marshal Bruce back to action, and there’s a horrific crunching sound over the comms as the twins crush the monster’s skull several agonizing minutes of grappling later. As soon as it’s done, though, they break alignment, both because Bruce’s biometrics indicate that he’s on the verge of unconsciousness and because Trevin actually disengages from his harness. The conn pod video feed shows him pulling Bruce close, cradling his older brother in his arms. Mercifully, Vera turns the feed off once they’re sure the brothers are okay, cutting the comms as well to give the two men privacy.

“I’ll call you as soon as they return,” she tells the waiting Beckets, giving them both sympathetic smiles.

 

 

That night, Chuck calls them, says he heard about the fight from his ‘old man,’ and he was wondering how Bruce was doing.

“He’ll be okay,” Raleigh says softly, light from the screen hurting his eyes in the darkened bedroom. “The pain nearly threw them out of sync, but they did it.”

After that the call is fairly routine—well, as routine as something can be that they’ve never done before. Raleigh and Yancy ask after Herc and Scott, and then ask how Chuck’s studies are going. Chuck, in turn, asks them if they haven’t finished their bloody degrees yet, which gets a laugh out of both blonds.

When they finally hang up, extracting another promise out of each other that, this time, they’ll actually keep in contact, Raleigh feels that much lighter. He hadn’t realized how funny Chuck could be—even if he didn’t intend it—but the redhead had managed to make them both laugh at least three more times in the call. He’d yelled at them for it, too, which only made them laugh harder.

 

 

The next night, he and Yancy both gather around their wall console after visiting Bruce in the hospital, Trevin a constant presence by his brother’s side, and dial Chuck. He blinks at the screen when he first answers, as if he can’t quite believe that they’re actually doing this, and then scowls.

“What d’you two want?” he asks.

“Surprise,” Raleigh offers with a grin. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Yancy waving. “We just wanted to call and talk, Chuckles.”

The scowl deepens. “Don’t call me that.”

“Whatever you say, Chuckles,” Yancy laughs, the sound easing the furrow between the Australian’s eyes. “Now tell us about how much smarter you are than the two of us combined. How was school?”

 

 

They talk.

Maybe it becomes a regular thing.

Maybe Raleigh gets a kick out of the spunky little redhead’s unintended humor, the way he tries to be so intimidating and brusque but, to the younger Becket, it just comes off as cute.

Maybe he likes to think of Chuck as the little brother he never had.

Maybe, when Herc and Scott get some leave after they take down their first Kaiju and the Hansens decide to visit Kodiak Island again, Raleigh sweeps the youngest Hansen up into a hug, Yancy joining in and ruffling the kid’s hair.

And, maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t miss the way Chuck hugs them back, or the way Herc smiles at the three of them.

 

 

By the time Raleigh and Yancy enter the Academy in late June, the Gages have taken down another Kaiju, though the second one goes off practically without a hitch. Raleigh and Yancy have gotten their high school diplomas through the PPDC—though Raleigh’d had to ask special permission to graduate early—and spend most of their time in the weeks before the next recruitment cycle starts making sure they’re physically ready for the program. Bruce and Trevin had warned them that it would be more intense than they could imagine, so, by the time the day finally rolls around and the two blonds are listening to a speech from the now-Marshall Stacker Pentecost, they’ve spent the last four weeks going to bed sore all over. They can’t complain about the results, though: every time Yancy comes out of the shower, now, Raleigh has to physically restrain himself from mauling his brother where he stands, licking every last stray drop of water from his skin.

More importantly, though, by that time, their weekly camping trips are finally bearing fruit. That is, Yancy has taught Raleigh everything he knows about being a dragon—which, the older Becket easily admits, isn’t much—and all that’s left is additional practice. At the very least, Raleigh can now control his shifts and can shift completely—something, Yancy constantly reminds Raleigh, that should only be used as a last resort. The first time that Raleigh had changed into a fully-formed dragon, Yancy had laughed at him for five minutes solid as he’d tried to relearn how to do something as simple as walk without tripping over his own two—now four—feet. When Yancy shifts completely, though, and joins him in the sky, it’s just like Raleigh’s old dreams: the two of them flying under a blue dome, the forests and mountains stretched beneath them, sunlight glinting off of their silver and gold scales as they soar between peaks and then up into the clouds.

On their first day, just before they enter the receiving bay where the Marshall will give his speech, the Gages both congratulate Raleigh on being the youngest person to ever make it into the Academy—and, if he graduates on time, on being the youngest person to ever graduate as well. They also give the blonds long, matching hugs, telling them both how proud the twins are of them.

“Now get in there,” Bruce tells them with a toothy smile, looping his arm around Trevin’s waist, “and show the rest of them how it’s really done.”

 

 

They make it through the first cut without many problems. True, the exercises and training are far more intense than anything the Gages threw at them, and the added wrinkle of actual classes—lectures, exams, and then practicals where they have to demonstrate the knowledge they’ve gained—just creates an entirely new layer of stress. Bruce and Trevin help them through it as best as they can, though they try to minimize their impact for fear that others will accuse them of favoritism or of the Beckets having an unfair advantage.

The sad fact of the matter, Raleigh thinks to himself, is that they _do_ have an unfair advantage, though not one that anyone can know about. And he knows that, if he and Yancy are having this much trouble keeping up, the other, more-human recruits must be in absolute hell.

When they make it to the second round of training and are tested for drift compatibility, Raleigh and Yancy raise their hanbo into mirrored poses without even thinking about it. They’ve spent so much time flying together, so much time linked by their mental bond whenever they sneak away, that they already know how to read each other with unerring accuracy. When one of them strikes, the other is already dancing away and whipping around for a counterattack. When their staves do meet, it’s in a thunderous crack of wood on wood that lasts for a split second before both of them are jumping backward, attacking and dodging simultaneously in an unending whirl of limbs and weapons.

After seventeen minutes of this, when both brothers are panting, and Raleigh can feel his heart pounding in his chest as a grin stretches across his face, their instructor calls an end to their still-points-free match.

“Christ,” he mutters, “I’d say you two are compatible, then. Get the hell out of my Kwoon.”

 

 

It’s not until that evening that a question—very real and very pressing and very obvious now that he thinks about it—pops into Raleigh’s mind.

“Yance?” he whispers into the dark, craning his head back slightly to where his brother is spooning him, the warmth of the other man’s body seeping in through his sleep clothes. “You awake?”

“ ‘Course,” comes the soft, drowsy reply, and Raleigh opens his mouth to apologize but is cut off when Yancy continues. “Wha’s up, Rals?”

Sparing a thought about self-sacrificing older brothers, the younger blond asks, “Are… are we actually going to be able to drift?”

There’s a soft, audible rush of warm air against his neck that Raleigh knows is one of his brother’s tells for when he’s thinking.

“I mean,” he continues, “it’s just that the drift was designed for, y’know, humans, and well, we’re…”

He trails off, but he doesn’t have to wait long for Yancy to answer.

“It should work, I think, yeah,” comes the tentative response. “I mean, physically, we’re not really that different from a human at all when we look like this. And, I mean, Herc can drift with his brother, and he’s more outwardly supernatural than us, so… I guess?”

Raleigh huffs out a single, sardonic laugh.

“I guess we’ll find out then, huh?”

 

 

As it turns out, they can drift. Raleigh’s not sure if it’s only while they’re unshifted, but he’s not exactly willing to try to find out right now, and neither, he’s sure, is Yancy.

Also, Raleigh finally understands what the Gages meant.

The drift is not silence like all their instructors would have them believe. The drift is light and noise and smell and taste and _feelings_ and like two minds trying so hard to occupy one space that they eventually merge into one and everything is left exposed, like a raw nerve. Every sensation, every thought, every emotion, every memory, is there on display as their minds whirl towards a stable link, rushing past each other in a massive tidal wave that is all at once too fast, too much and yet _not nearly enough_.

It’s like the mental bond they share when they’re shifted, yet so much _more_.

Raleigh looks over at his brother once his vision clears of memories that are not his own, can see his how Yancy sees him, feels the sudden rush of longing and affection and _desire_ that sings through his veins that is so like his own that he’s not even sure it _isn’t_ him at this point. He experiences the flash of memory that roars across his brother’s mind: Raleigh, half-shifted, his body still human-shaped, covered in golden scales that scatter the moonlight, ruby eyes _burning_ , mouth opened in an oh-so human smile made of still-blunt teeth that looks somehow _wrong_ with the lips covered by his glittering hide, giving the appearance of them almost not being there at all.

‘ _You’re so beautiful, Rals,_ ’ comes the errant thought from Yancy, and Raleigh can’t help but blush in his harness at the _sincerity_ he can hear—can _feel_ —behind the words. ‘ _Love you so much, kiddo_.’

‘ _Love you too, Yance,_ ’ Raleigh sends back with a smile.

 

 

When their minds slither apart, Raleigh nearly chokes on the sobs that suddenly wrack his body.

Coming down off of that level of connection, of being _so close_ to someone else that you can’t tell where you end and they begin anymore, physically _hurts_. So Raleigh does the first thing—the _only_ thing that makes sense to him.

He rips off his helmet and shoves Yancy against the nearest bulkhead, ripping his brother’s helmet off and slamming their mouths together.

The older Becket reciprocates for all of two seconds before a tech behind them coughs politely.

“Sorry to interrupt guys,” she says, blushing slightly as she smiles shyly, “but we need to get you out of your suits first.”

When Yancy, breathing heavily, finally seems to register her existence, the hands he has on Raleigh’s waist move to shove the younger Becket away. The tech, however, laughs and raises her palms towards them.

“Oh, no, please, don’t get embarrassed on my account,” she tells them, brown curls bobbing as she shakes her head. “It’s not an unusual reaction. Trust me, there’s no judgment here. If any of us were bothered by, well,” she gestures at the two of them, “anything like this, then we wouldn’t be here. Saving humanity is more important than who you love, anyway.”

Raleigh just blinks at her, then says, softly, “Thank you.”

“Any time,” the girl says, grin widening as her hazel eyes sparkle at them in mirth before she turns on a heel and stalks away, clearly expecting them to follow. “The name’s Genevieve, by the way. Genevieve Lapierre. Let’s go get you two out of those things.”

 

 

The second they make it back to their room, Raleigh shoves a blanket under the bottom of the door to the Gages’ room—just in case—and practically attacks Yancy. The scant layers they’d been wearing under the black drivesuits come away one at a time until, for the first time ever, the two of them are laid bare before each other, their bodies pressed flush together. Raleigh moans into their kiss, whispers of his brother’s heady desire still shooting like phantom limbs through his mind.

When he wraps his fingers around Yancy’s cock for the first time, there’s a spark that travels across the ghost of a bridge between them, igniting Raleigh’s veins with the sheer _rightness_ of it. He attacks his brothers mouth with fervor, trying to swallow the groans the older blond is making and store them somewhere deep inside where he can have and hold them forever.

“Fuck, Yancy,” he breathes between kisses, his skin feeling too tight as he strokes the hard flesh in his palm, the noises that spill from his brother’s mouth almost too much to bear. “Fuck, Yance, _please_ , I,” he makes a frustrated whining noise in the back of his throat as Yancy leans in to seal their mouths together again, “want you, Yance, fuckin’ _need_ you, _please_.”

However, when he starts to move down, trailing kisses over Yancy’s neck and then chest, spending time sucking and nipping both of his brother’s nipples and drawing the most beautiful gasping noises from the older Becket, Yancy’s hand fists in his hair when he tries to go any lower.

“No, Rals,” he growls lowly, eyes flashing, pupils lengthening. “No.”

“ _Please_ ,” Raleigh’s begging now, but he doesn’t even care, his cock weeping where it’s jutting away from his belly, so hard it almost hurts, “please Yance, I need you, I _need_ —”

The hand in his hair hauls him back to his brother’s eye level, and Raleigh follows willingly.

“Then have this,” Yancy rumbles, the heat of his hand on Raleigh’s cock and the way he twists his palm over the sensitive head making the younger blond’s knees tremble. “But not that,” he continues, a promise stirring in his eyes, “not yet. Soon.”

When they finally come, thrusting wildly against each other and into each other’s hands, Yancy somehow comes first. The threads of his orgasm travel to Raleigh’s mind and setting off a chain reaction, causing the younger Becket to paint their torsos in his release and mix it with the cooling mess Yancy’d left behind.

“I love you so much, Rals,” Yancy pants into his open mouth, a small portion of the emotion washing over their tenuous link and nearly making Raleigh weep from its intensity. Instead, he closes his eyes and leans forward, not caring that he’s smearing their collective mess between them, and leaves a closed-mouth kiss on the corner of his brother’s lips.

He doesn’t say anything back out loud.

He doesn’t have to.

Yancy understands.

 

 

They both dream of the red dragon again, following them in their game of sky-tag.

At least this time, when they both wake up in the middle of the night, the room next door is quiet, and they fall back into an easy sleep.

 

 


	7. lonely no more

The graduation date falls on Yancy’s birthday again, his twenty first, which means that the party this time around is especially large, with everyone apparently trying to get the older Becket rip-roaring drunk. Even Chuck, who had flown over with his father and Scott, and the Gages all give him drinks, though how Chuck managed to get his hands on alcohol, no one asks. Genevieve stops by, wishing them both luck, before she says she has to head back to the simulator, replace a few parts that a group of inexperienced trainees had broken.

The Kaidonovskys, who had been Trevin and Bruce’s classmates and who pilot the Mark 1 Cherno Alpha out of Hong Kong—at least, until the Shatterdome in Vladivostok is completed—both drop bottles of a clear liquid into Yancy’s lap at some point in the night. Raleigh opens one and smells its contents, stomach nearly heaving as the scent tries to burn a hole through his nose and into his brain.

“Will put hair on old Becket’s chest,” says Sasha, grinning like a wolf at her bear of a husband, Aleksis. The Russian man just mimics her smile. The two of them terrify Raleigh, just the tiniest bit.

When the night finally ends, Yancy is so drunk that it takes both Raleigh and the twins to get him back to their room. When Raleigh wants to take him to the bed, Bruce shakes his head with a knowing smile and leads Raleigh’s brother into the bathroom, depositing him in front of the toilet.

“Trust me,” the older man mutters when Raleigh argues Yancy would be more comfortable in the bed, the two of them standing over the older Becket as he moans unhappily on the floor, “it’s only a matter of time.”

 

 

Yancy spends the next two hours worshiping the porcelain gods, ejecting most of the contents of his stomach as well as the water that Raleigh continually shoves down his throat. The older Becket spends half his time groaning that he’s never going to do this again and the other half crying for his brother. Raleigh soothes him as best as he can, not leaving Yancy’s side. When the other blond finally passes out, Raleigh moves them both to their bed, laying them both on their sides, spooning Yancy from behind and joining him in unconsciousness.

 

 

The next day, they learn there’s a new Jaeger—a Mark 3—under production for the two of them. They aren’t told its name yet, but that doesn’t really matter. Excitement bubbles up in Raleigh’s chest as a very, _very_ hung-over Yancy catches him when the younger Becket flings himself into his brother’s arms.

They have a Jaeger.

Part of him doesn’t think this is real, that this must be some kind of elaborate dream and he and Yancy are still asleep back in Anchorage.

But then Genevieve stops by their room, knocking and telling them that she’s apparently going to be chief tech on their Jaeger and that she’s been sent all the schematics to start studying. She waves the thick folder in front of the Beckets tauntingly until they invite her in, and set about getting to know the iron giant they’re going to pilot to keep other people safe.

 

 

On Raleigh’s eighteenth birthday, he only asks Yancy for one thing.

Yancy agrees.

They both get medical to double-check their old blood tests and take new ones. They report that, just like before, other than elevated levels of Hsp70, nothing seems to be out of place. It’s good enough.

That night, as they arrange themselves on the bed, they take things as slowly as they can. After all, as Yancy says, he wants to make it special. Of all the things Raleigh remembers Yancy having on his list a few years ago, none of them end up making it to the actual night. There are no candlelit dinners, no flowers, and no overt romantic gestures.

They don’t _need_ any of those things.

Instead, they have Yancy claiming Raleigh’s mouth in a searing kiss, their tongues lazily stroking over each other, in no hurry to continue.

They have Yancy taking the younger Becket’s cock to the root in one slow, continuous motion, swallowing around it and making Raleigh writhe in pleasure as he thrusts into his brother’s mouth.

They have Raleigh attempting to do the same, gagging on his brother’s dick when he goes too far and pulling himself off, gasping for air while Yancy pats his back and tells him he doesn’t have to get the whole thing the first time—or ever, even, if that’s what he wants.

They have Yancy licking his brother open as he holds the younger blond’s hips in the air, tongue darting out to circle the clenching rim before teasing his way inside, drawing a loud moan from Raleigh’s throat. Yancy laughs against his hole, the vibrations making the teen in his arms moan louder and whisper, brokenly, “God, Yance, _please_.”

They have sweet brushes of their lips as Raleigh grinds down onto the three fingers that are now filling him, Yancy refusing to do anything more until he’s _absolutely_ sure he won’t hurt his brother.

They have hisses through clenched teeth as Yancy slides into Raleigh, lube-slathered cock disappearing inch by wonderful inch. Raleigh can feel his brother’s heartbeat through the intimate contact, can feel the girth inside of him swelling to the pulse-pounding that’s in time with the staccato rhythm in his own chest.

They have broken phrases of love and affection, uttered between moans, and noises that can only be described as incoherent, keening sounds of pleasure as Yancy pistons in and out of his younger brother’s body. Raleigh’s nails scratch welts down the older man’s back as he tries desperately to hang on, to not fall off the precipice just yet.

It’s messy. Every now and then, Yancy won’t get the angle quite right on a thrust, missing Raleigh’s prostate entirely and causing the younger blond to growl needily. Occasionally, one of them will make a noise that’s so ridiculous that they both nearly burst into giggles.

When Raleigh comes, cries pitching high as Yancy covers his brother’s mouth with his own and empties himself inside the fluttering heat that surrounds him, it’s everything he’s ever wanted—everything he’s ever _dreamed_ —and more; it feels even better than flying.

They have tender kisses and whispered words, bodies shifting closer with Yancy’s softening length still buried inside of Raleigh, both of them desperately trying to stay connected as long as possible.

They don’t have perfect. But, honestly, that’s alright: they don’t _need_ perfect.

They have each other, and that’s perfect enough.

 

 

Less than two weeks later, they’re assigned to the newly-opened Shatterdome back in Anchorage. After a heated argument with the Marshall and higher command that carries throughout practically the entire Academy, the Gages manage to get themselves transferred as well. They argue, apparently convincingly, that having a ‘dome in Anchorage, fewer than 200 miles away, makes having Jaegers stationed at the Academy redundant.

Once they’re on the chopper and underway, Bruce pulls the two of them aside and confesses that neither he nor Trevin were ready to be separated from them, yet. When he catches sight of Genevieve staring at them from across the row of seats, he frowns at her, but Raleigh quickly pulls the brunet back and hastily whispers, “It’s okay, she’s a friend,” into the older man’s ear. He seems to relax, though the tension doesn’t completely leave his shoulders until they walk back over to where they’re sitting and Trevin wraps his arm around his older brother’s waist and pulls him down to sit in his lap.

As the two men exchange a soft kiss—a gentle, almost-not-there brush of lips—Raleigh finds himself wondering how he could’ve ever imagined the two of them with anyone else. Or, more to the point, he could have ever thought they didn’t simply belong together. Yancy must notice the direction of his gaze, because, the next thing he knows, his brother is blocking his view, devious smile on his lips as he brushes their mouths together.

“I think your brother’s jealous,” Genevieve calls out, restrained mirth clear in her voice.

Raleigh can see Yancy flick her off out of the corner of his eye, can hear her answer it with snorting laughter, before he closes his eyes and lets himself get lost in his brother.

 

 

In the first week of July, the Beckets and Gages gather around the console in Romeo’s pilots’ room to watch the streaming video and status updates piped in from Sydney as Lucky Seven and Vulcan Specter take on a category three kaiju in Sydney Harbor. There’s a moment where it appears that the monster has gotten a solid grip on Lucky and is attempting to rip it limb from limb, but then Vulcan is there, swords flashing in the fading sunlight, depriving the kaiju of a single, malformed limb. The tide of the fight turns immediately, and only a few minutes later the two Jaegers stand alone, the alien creature lying pummeled and eviscerated at their feet.

To say that the four of them are relieved is an understatement. Though no Jaeger has lost to a Kaiju, there have been several close calls, not to mention several incidents where Jaegers—or their pilots—were damaged badly enough that they were removed from service. As soon as the fight concludes, Raleigh and Yancy are using the Gages’ console to dial up the Sydney ‘dome, specifically the direct line to the Hansens’ quarters.

No one answers, which in and of itself isn’t unexpected, exactly. Given that Herc and Scott are both obviously in the field at the moment, Chuck is probably breathing down a LOCCENT tech’s neck somewhere. When Yancy gives voice to the thought, Raleigh allows himself to chuckle softly, because, really, he can totally imagine the thirteen year old doing exactly that. Though the other boy would never admit it, Raleigh knows Chuck actually does love his father and uncle, as much as he tries to pull away from them all the time or scoffs whenever the Beckets ask after them.

So, instead, they leave a message, telling the Hansens to give them a call whenever they get a moment. Raleigh doesn’t notice until they upload the video message that Bruce had been making funny faces in the background the entire time.

 

 

It’s not until three days later, when the four of them still haven’t heard from the Hansens and are starting to get moderately worried, Raleigh and Yancy both throwing themselves into training and exercises to keep themselves distracted, that they finally get a response.

Or, more to the point, the Hansen family comes to visit them.

 

 

They get no warning. The four of them are sparring in pairs in the Kwoon, the two older pilots down by one point—though, really, they don’t stop when they get to four, instead going until they’re tired and tallying it all up at the end. Normally they have an audience of several techs, some of the paramilitary forces that patrol the hallways and ensure no unauthorized personnel enter the ‘dome, and, every once in a while, a few of the LOCCENT staff. Today is no exception, and when Raleigh and Yancy manage to execute a complicated maneuver that involves Yancy feinting to draw out Bruce, only to have the twin be taken down by a quick pin from Raleigh for his over-eagerness, there is a smattering of applause from the onlookers. What _is_ different, though, is the rough, smoky laughter that accompanies it.

“Fell right for that one, didn’t ya, Brucey?”

Raleigh feels ice solidify in his veins, only to have it be purged by pure fire a second later as his mind places the voice. He feels Bruce tense underneath him, and hears Trevin breath a soft, “What…?” from where the older man had frozen, about to strike at Raleigh’s exposed side in retaliation for the pin—a strike, Raleigh knows on some instinctual level, that Yancy would’ve blocked. As the younger Becket cranes his head to locate the source of the voice and laughter, he can see his brother and adoptive fathers doing the same out of the corner of his eye.

Herc is grinning at them from the doorway, Chuck at his side, while Scott is standing slightly removed from the two of them and looking between the American pilots and his family. The middle Hansen has an absolutely devilish smirk splitting his features.

“Toldja their reaction would be better if we didn’t call first,” he says. “You four should really see your faces. Priceless, I tell ya.”

Which is when Raleigh, Yancy, and the Gages all surge into motion.

 

 

After the initial flurry of excitement—Raleigh and Yancy may or may not have tackled Chuck when they finally got to him, and the growls Chuck made at the action may or may not have been obviously halfhearted—the Hansens settle in as if they are nothing more than additional members of the Becket/Gage family coming home after a long day. Herc and Scott are, thankfully, relatively unharmed from their fight—though apparently Scott had gotten bruised down one side when the kaiju had grappled with Lucky—and seem to instead be nothing more than weary and wanting some time for R&R. When Raleigh points out that, as Jaeger pilots, they’re typically considered as on duty all the time, the Hansens tell him that Echo and Vulcan are covering for them for the next few weeks.

“Bastards owe us,” Scott mutters under his breath. “We were bloody covering for Saber’s crew when the damn thing hit. Wish _I_ coulda been working on my tan instead of gettin’ thrown around. Be a nice change of pace.”

“I hate to tell you this, Scotty,” Bruce teases the older man, “but if you came here looking to get tan, well. You came to the wrong ‘dome.”

“Whatever, just so long as you lot don’t force any of that damn swill you call beer down our throats, we’ll be good.”

 

 

As it turns out, the Australians’ quarters are right next to the other pilots’, and the seven of them spend the next few days mostly avoiding going out except for food.

Chuck insists that Raleigh and Yancy take him to the ‘dome’s gym at for at least two hours each day. Claims he’s preparing to go to the academy in a few years.

“ ‘M gonna be the best bloody pilot that ever lived. You’ll see,” he tells the brothers on their first day, both the blonds smiling at him. He must see something patronizing there, though, because his brows furrow together—Raleigh has to mentally restrain himself from thinking of the expression as _cute_ —and he huffs out, “Just ‘cause ‘m not a bloody dragon like you two doesn’t mean I can’t do this. Arseholes.”

A splinter of ice slides down Raleigh’s back, and he looks around quickly to make sure no one heard that. Beside him, he hears Yancy growl lowly. The reaction seems to be enough to cheer Chuck back up, the little shit.

“Oi, sod off, th’both of ya,” he tells them, face twisting into a sardonic grin. “Not like anyone here would believe it, anyway.”

Raleigh heaves a sigh at the words, shoving the redhead’s head under his arm and ruffling his hair playfully, which earns him an indignant squawk. Kid’s grown like a weed since they last saw him, and the younger Becket internally bemoans the fact that he might not be comparatively tall enough to do that much longer.

“Alright, you two, enough,” Yancy chides them, the worry from earlier a distant memory as he chuckles softly.

 

 

On Friday, the ‘adults’, as Scott likes to call the four of them, decide that Raleigh, Yancy, and Chuck should collect dinner for all of them. Chuck whines about it, throwing several key insults towards his father and uncle in particular.

“So,” Trevin greets the three of them when they return, each balancing two trays of food—except for Yancy, who’d opted to be the person with a free hand to open doors, “we were thinking—”

“Don’t hurt yourselves,” Chuck bites out, smirking, which just gets a laugh from Bruce and a scowl from Herc as the older man mutters something that sounds distinctly like, “ _Behave_.” Scott, for his part, doesn’t react except to send a single, arched eyebrow Chuck’s way.

“ _We were thinking_ ,” Trevin continues, smiling and taking a tray from Raleigh to put on the counter of the kitchenette, “that you boys might want to take Chuck on one of your camping trips this weekend. Herc and Scott were just telling us how they used to go themselves back, well,” the younger twin trails off, but the words don’t need to be said. Before the war. Before Chuck’s mom was nothing more than ashes in a smoldering crater. Before all of their lives had changed. There’s silence for a few moments, broken only by the scraping of utensils against plates and the soft sounds of chewing. Raleigh, for his part, spends the time stewing over the proposal in his head. He can feel a soft unease emanating from his brother across their ghost drift—it seems to get stronger and stronger each time they step inside a sim—and finds that, as much as he likes Chuck and enjoys having him around, he’s not so sure if this is a good idea. After all, their camping trips still involve very little actual camping. And, though he knows that Chuck knows about the two of them, what they are, he doesn’t quite know if he’s ready for the redhead to actually, well, _see_.

“Anyway,” the brunet continues eventually, “we figured it would be a good way for you boys to bond. Y’know. Being one with nature and all that.”

“Oh, please, Trev, don’t patronize the kids, eh?” Scott laughs before turning to the Beckets. “What your parents are trying to say is that they want you kiddies out of the house so they can fuck.”

And it’s that, the mental image perhaps, more than anything, which has Raleigh jumping to agree. Even though he can admit to himself that the Gages are attractive—and, in fact, some part of him thinks that if he didn’t have Yancy and they didn’t have each other, maybe he would’ve given one of them a try—one time overhearing them have sex was awkward enough. Perhaps most surprising of all, though, is that Yancy agrees as well.

 

 

The morning they leave, backpacks at the ready, the four older men give them a brief sendoff. Or, more to the point, a bleary-eyed Bruce and Trevin are waiting for them by the exit as Herc and Scott stand protectively around Chuck, the youngest redhead scowling at his older relatives.

“You take care of him,” Herc tells the two of them, a hint of a growl beneath the words before he softens and adds, under his breath, so lowly that Raleigh’s sure they wouldn’t have heard it except for their advanced hearing, “please.”

The Beckets simply nod at the older man, accepting hugs from the Gages before they head out to the lot where a PPDC-issued car is waiting for them. When Yancy slides into the driver’s seat, Raleigh looks back at Chuck, the younger teen a few steps behind him.

“You want shotgun?” he asks. The look Chuck gives him is equal parts horrified and confused.

“Why the bloody hell do you need a shotgun to drive there? Are there gonna be fuckin’ _bears_ or some shit? Because fuck you if there are fuckin’ bears you both better go full fuckin’ dragon but then why do you even need a—” the Australian starts rambling, but Raleigh cuts him off with a laugh.

“No, not an _actual_ shotgun,” he clarifies, “the front seat.” There’s a beat before Chuck responds, teeth clacking shut and eyebrows scrunching together.

“Then why the hell don’t you just call it shotty like a normal fucking per—oh my fucking god, _no_ ,” he interrupts himself, looking absolutely stricken, “you’ve got to be _joking_. _That’s_ where that comes from?”

Yancy is still laughing so hard by the time Raleigh pushes Chuck into the front seat that they can’t even start driving for another five minutes.

 

 

The drive itself is relatively short. Chuck and Yancy talk almost nonstop, though Raleigh doesn’t know what about. He simply dozes, stretched out on the back seat as best as he can given that he’s just over six feet tall in a five feet wide car. The other half-dozen or so times that they’ve come out here, he’s cranked his seat back and closed his eyes, but the addition of a third person makes that less feasible. Raleigh knows when they’ve reached their destination by the way the car slows and turns sharply, the motions suddenly becoming hauntingly familiar.

“So where are we, anyway?” comes the inevitable question from Chuck, which Yancy only answers with a vague, “You’ll see.”

When they roll to a stop, Raleigh is fully awake, and he sits up to hop out of the car, feeling around for the latch on the bottom edge of the trunk’s rim to get at their gear. He studiously does not look towards the front of the car, only glancing up at his brother once Yancy comes to stand beside him. Chuck, though, has no such qualms.

“What the hell happened here?” he asks softly, gaze on what Raleigh knows is still a blackened scorch mark in the center of the clearing, positioned just where the road ends. He swallows, pulling his pack onto his back and fiddling with the fastenings.

“I did,” he answers, looking at the blackened pile of ashes that used to be his life, and doesn’t elaborate further.

 

 

Chuck figures it out in less than five minutes. Kid’s smart, Raleigh’ll give him that. Eventually, the redhead starts asking the expected questions, and Raleigh and Yancy both give the expected answers.

They hike the familiar paths by the remnants of their old house because they know them—hence ‘familiar’. They also do it because their house had been relatively secluded, so they’re, for the most part, free to stretch and be themselves when they’re out here.

“But why keep coming back here, though?” Chuck eventually asks. “I mean, y’both obviously don’t like the reminder or whatever it is about this place that put you on edge when we first got here, so why bother?”

“Because,” Yancy tells him as he carefully steps over a fallen log, twigs cracking underfoot as he moves them through the forest towards the slope of one of the smaller mountains nearby, “it’s still our home.”

 

 

After they find an appropriate spot with a large enough space in the trees, they set up camp and erect their small tent. Once finished, the Beckets deposit their gear and step out of the brightly-colored nylon and start to undress. It’s not until he’s down to just a t-shirt and boxers that Raleigh becomes aware of the fact that Chuck is making confused noises at them from inside the tent flap.

“Mind explaining what the _fuck_ you two’re doing?” the redhead asks them finally, and Raleigh looks over ay Yancy in surprise, his brother in nothing but his underwear.

“Uh,” Raleigh stammers, face heating, because wow he’s really not used to having other people here. “We, uh—”

“We’re going flying,” Yancy answers, raising an eyebrow in challenge.

It’s like he’s said something that flips a switch within Chuck. The Australian goes from spluttering at them to grinning so widely it looks like his face is going to crack in half.

“Really? So you’re gonna, like—?”

“Shift, yeah,” the older Becket answers the question before Chuck can even finish it. “Is that okay?”

Raleigh’s stomach plummets, because they hadn’t even thought about the fact that they’ll probably be leaving Chuck all alone for their flight; he’d been too wrapped up in the idea that he’d finally get to stretch his wings again.

“I mean, yeah, it’s fine,” Chuck answers, still smiling. “Is it okay if I watch?”

Raleigh shrugs, pulling his shirt over his head.

“I mean, I don’t see why not. Yance?”

“Yeah, sure, it’s fine,” the other blond says before turning his attention back to Chuck. “Just try not to be too impressed, alright, kid?”

Chuck’s shout of, “I’m not a bloody _kid_ ,” is cut off midway by Yancy shucking his last article of clothing and shifting, silver scales writhing into being over his body. When he opens his eyes again, they glow a bright, vivid blue, and, with a low cracking sound that’s drowned out by a whoosh of moving air, his wings extend to their full eighteen-foot span, the sunlight gleaming off the mirror-like facets. Even underneath the scales that cover his face, Raleigh can see him smirking at the gob-smacked expression on the Australian’s face.

“Holy shit,” Chuck manages to croak out, which just makes Yancy’s smirk drift higher. His entire body shudders lightly, and Raleigh can’t help but roll his eyes.

“Show off,” he mutters under his breath, before adding, slightly louder, “you might wanna step back, Chuck. This next part is a bit, uh, bigger.”

The redhead runs to stand beside Raleigh as Yancy closes his wings about his own body, the limbs lengthening as they do, the form they encapsulate expanding. When, a few moments later, Yancy lets his wings drift skyward once more, he is completely shifted.

Raleigh knows his brother is a sight to behold in his dragon form. Just over one hundred feet long from glittering snout to tail, with wings that are equally wide, blue eyes glowing more brightly than before, visible even in the mid-day sunlight. He opens his mouth in an expression that Raleigh doesn’t need to be shifted to know is a wide grin, wicked fangs peeking from between his scaled lips. To any normal person, he muses, the sight would appear intimidating.

Chuck is apparently not a normal person.

The redhead takes one look at Yancy, looks over at Raleigh as if trying to find something, some kind of meaning, in his gaze, and then looks back at Yancy.

“Can I?” he asks, stretching out one hand, palm down, fingers stretched towards the older Becket. The harsh intake of breath is all Raleigh needs to know that the request startles him as much as it does Yancy.

Silence follows for perhaps five of Raleigh’s thudding heartbeats before it’s broken by the sound of Chuck gulping audibly before he takes a single step. When neither Becket moves at the action—though Raleigh’s heart is certainly in his throat because he did _not_ see this coming—he takes another, and then another, until he’s finally just a few feet from Raleigh’s brother. Before the redhead can move, though, Yancy extends his neck, bumping his nose against Chuck’s hand.

The noise that the redhead makes is a cross between a gasp and a laugh.

“It’s so _warm_ ,” are the first words out of his mouth, sounding like he can hardly believe his own senses—like, Raleigh realizes, a thirteen year old child experiencing something completely unknown and wonderful. The younger blond smiles as Chuck flattens his hand against the silver snout, a breathless sound escaping the Australian’s lips, and Raleigh finishes pulling off his remaining clothes and shifts as silently as he can. Thankfully, the youngest Hansen is so enraptured by Yancy that he seems to be completely oblivious to the world around him.

The sound that Chuck makes—one of surprise that morphs into childish delight—when Raleigh nudges him in the back with his gold-scaled nose is one he’ll carry with him for a long time.

 

 

Raleigh thinks the most surprising thing about Chuck is that he’s completely, utterly unafraid of either of them.

Then the little bastard goes and proves him wrong—or rather, trumps his previous achievement. By asking if he can ride one of them.

What follows can best be described as copious swearing as Raleigh and Yancy both, silently except for their mental link, swap a series of facial expressions. Raleigh’s all for it, whereas Yancy is opposed. Meanwhile, Chuck just curses at them to hurry up and fucking decide because he’s not getting any younger down here. When Yancy growls at him and gets no reaction, the older Becket waits a half-beat before opening his maw and _roaring_ in the kid’s face.

‘Yance! _’_ Raleigh chides his brother even though he can see that Chuck doesn’t so much as twitch. ‘ _Leave him alone, seriously._ ’

‘ _Well, then maybe he shouldn’t be so freaking annoying_ ,’ comes the grumbled reply.

 

 

In the end, Raleigh agrees to let Chuck ride on his back. He has to shift back briefly to relay the message, adding, “and you better hold on, damn it, because I am not explaining to your dad why you ended up splattered on a mountainside.”

Chuck snorts at him. “Please. As if you could even shake me off.”

 

 

The redhead's screams when Raleigh calls his challenge, rolling in the air to break the white-knuckled grip the younger teen has on the base of the dragon’s neck, seem to speak to the contrary. It’s not until he breaks into a smooth dive and scoops the thirteen-year-old out of the air, his scaled body a golden, serpentine arc that neatly bisects the sky, that Raleigh realizes that Chuck’s screams are not of terror, but of _delight_.

“Knew you’d catch me,” the Australian calls to him over the roar of the wind, tone entirely too smug, so much trust in the voice that it almost makes Raleigh _ache_. The smile the dragon can see Chuck wearing out of the corner of his eye, though, makes it worth it. It even makes the _loud_ berating he’s getting from Yancy tolerable. If he were still human, he knows he’d be smiling, too.

 

 

When Raleigh gets closer to Yancy and Chuck jumps over midair to straddle the older Becket’s neck, Yancy doesn’t complain. Simply huffs into the wind and folds his wings to his body as soon as the redhead’s settled, falling into a dive. Chuck’s whoops are audible even over the screaming air currents as Raleigh mimics his brother and follows them down.

 

 

“Seriously, do you idiots not even know how to start a fire?” Chuck asks them later that evening when Raleigh returns with the bundle of sticks he’d been sent to retrieve. Yancy just shrugs, mirroring Raleigh’s internal thoughts.

“Don’t really need to. I mean,” the older Becket reaches out a finger and points it upward, a small jet of silver flame rising into the sky, and what the hell, he’d never taught Raleigh how to do _that_ , “not like it’d ever be difficult even if we needed to.”

“We don’t really feel the cold as much,” Raleigh adds, which gets him a scoff from Chuck.

“Right. Well. Some of us are human and do not bloody well like the cold. So get a fucking fire started or I’ll rip off your magical lighter finger and do it myself. Or, better yet,” he reaches into his back and pulls out a flint, “forget that magic shit. I’m gonna show you two how it’s really done.”

 

 

Raleigh wakes from dreams of flying. Dreams of a ruby-red dragon twisting and turning between himself and Yancy, both of them in their completely shifted forms, the red dragon dwarfing even Raleigh’s 120-foot length. The red dragon, as it has been for months on end, ever since the dreams started back up, had been _playing_ with them, trying to get them to chase it, while the two of them held back, unease and curiosity both occupying Raleigh’s gut. However, instead of waking due to some jolt in the dream or a dive, as he normally does, Raleigh is awakened by a sound.

Specifically, the sound of Chuck sitting up and gasping in the cold night air.

The younger Becket props himself up where he’s lying on one side of the Australian, Yancy on the other side of their conjoined sleeping bags. It takes him a moment to remember why they’re sleeping this way, but the memories eventually filter back into his awareness like a slow brook filling a basin: because Chuck had argued that if a bear _did_ attack them, he wanted the Beckets as a buffer, because he claimed that since they ran slightly warmer than normal it was their job to keep his toes from freezing off, and because, as he put it, “I don’t need to bloody wake up to you seppos going at it.”

Raleigh blinks several times, the outline of the redhead’s frame resolving itself in the scant moonlight, the other teen’s shoulders moving slightly too fast but slowing as his breathing returns to normal. The blond rubs at his eyes.

“Wha’s’matter?” he slurs, Yancy stirring on Chuck’s other side.

“Nothin’,” comes the too-quick dismissal, words laconic. “ ‘S just a dream.”

“ ‘Bout what?” Yancy asks tiredly from where he’s propped himself up in a mirror to Raleigh’s stance.

“Nothin’ special,” Chuck answers, breathing back to normal as he leans back down and curls into Raleigh’s side. “Jus’ flying.”

Raleigh is suddenly completely awake, tendrils of ice freezing in his veins. He can hear Yancy’s heart, normally so steady and sure, skip a beat.

“ _What?_ ” the younger Becket hisses after a moment.

“Toldja,” come the slow words, Chuck’s breathing slowing, evening out, rhythm broken by a single yawn. “Flyin’. ‘N th’sky.”

When they try to press him for more details, he’s already asleep.

 

 

They talk about it in hushed tones, careful not to wake the teen between them.

By the time the sun is peeking over the horizon, the first few rays landing on their tent’s side, they still haven’t figured out what to do.

So they remain silent.

 

 


	8. standing together

Their Jaeger is complete the day after they get back.

And, due to a scheduling mistake, not a single soul in the entire ‘dome is aware that she’s coming.

The seven of them are all gathered in the Gages’ quarters, the older men discussing technical details of their Jaegers and ways to refine their performance while Raleigh and Yancy coach Chuck through some of the tech manuals he’s brought with him; apparently, if he can’t be a pilot, he says he’s going to get into J-Tech and design the next generation of Jaegers.

There’s a flurry of noise outside the door, but they all ignore it at first; after all, in the ‘dome, there’s always something happening somewhere. It isn’t until they hear someone knocking on the Beckets’ door frantically that they all stop talking and perk up. Raleigh feels his forehead crease, but stands and uses the middle door—the design of their quarters here is almost identical to what they’d had at the Academy—to access his and Yancy’s room.

Whoever’s on the other side is clearly impatient, because they’re knocking again in the five seconds it takes him to reach the door. Undoing the locking mechanism, he pulls the heavy metal back slowly only to have a very excited Genevieve flinging it wide, nearly beaning Raleigh in the face with the slab of steel.

“Get Yancy,” she half-says, half-shouts, out of breath. “Come quick. She’s here!”

Before Raleigh can answer, Genevieve spills back out into the hallway, dashing madly away. Raleigh leans out the door and yells after her, “She who?”

“Your Jaeger!”

The words must reach the other room, because Raleigh hears Bruce and Trevin shout in unison, “ _What?_ ” at the same time that Yancy chokes out a soft, “Holy _shit_.”

None of them can get their boots on fast enough.

 

 

When they finally make it to the Jaeger bay, they’re just opening the doors to wheel the two hundred and fifty feet of kaiju-killing power inside. The first thing that Raleigh thinks when he sees her is, ‘ _Holy shit, that’s really big_.’ Even after the Gages had received Romeo, he’d never fully gotten used to the massive scale to which the machines are built.

His second thought is ‘ _Blue,_ ’ because the entire hull seems to glow a sort of soft, deep, metallic blue. All except her visor, which is a vivid yellow-orange.

He hears a soft intake of breath beside him that he’d recognize anywhere, and he turns to find Yancy at his shoulder, gaze drawn to the behemoth that is to become their personal weapon.

“Oh my god,” his brother breathes, eyes still fixed on the Jaeger. “Can you believe that she’s ours, Rals?”

Raleigh shakes his head, redirecting his gaze just in time to see her grind to a halt in her alcove. “No,” he adds verbally, sure his brother still isn’t looking at him, “still feels like a dream, almost.”

“Gipsy Danger,” interrupts Genevieve’s voice. Raleigh starts and glances over at her.

“What?”

“Gipsy Danger,” the woman recites back, smirk quirking the corner of her mouth. “That’s her name. Mark 3, full steel hull, brand new Arc-9 reactor core, and the latest Blue Spark 4.1 operating system. Armaments include elbow propulsion systems and two experimental I-19 Plasmacasters, one in each hand.” Her smirk turns positively feral. “We are gonna have some _fun_ testing those out together, boys.”

However, Raleigh doesn’t hear much of what she’s saying. All that he can hear, the only thing resonating around his mind, are the first two words, and he feels his eyes heat as he stares at the conn pod, with its sunglasses-esque visor.

“Gipsy Danger,” he lets out under his breath, glancing over at his brother to see that Yancy’s eyes are glowing blue as well, pupils slit vertically. Something is welling up in his gut, some warm, _full_ emotion that it takes him a moment to realize is elation. They can _do_ this. They have a Jaeger, they have _Gipsy_ , now. The three of them can do what they originally set out to do: save the world from the monsters that want to tear it down so that more people don’t have to live as Raleigh and Yancy have.

“Oh my god, Rals, Yance, I am so freaking _jealous_ of you guys,” gushes Bruce from behind them, and before he can prepare himself, Raleigh has an arm wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him towards his brother as Bruce sweeps them both up in a tight hug.

There’s a soft, “C’mon, Bruce, don’t want to hurt them,” from the front, and then Trevin is adding his own arms to the hug, murmuring a soft, “So proud of you boys,” before he’s prying Bruce’s arms from them.

“Let them have their moment, Brucey,” Raleigh hears the younger twin whisper before something barrels into his back and side.

“ _Woah_ ,” breathes a young, Australian-tinged voice, “that it?”

“Chuck!” comes Herc’s voice as Scott just laughs softly. “C’mere. Give the boys a sec’ to themselves, eh?”

Raleigh glances over at Yancy, both their eyes back to normal, catching his brother’s gaze. He glances down at Chuck where the redhead has got his arms wrapped around Raleigh’s torso to stabilize himself as he stands on tiptoes, then glances back up at his brother, raising his eyebrows. An image of a red dragon flits through his mind, and he’s almost positive he sees the same thought pass behind Yancy’s eyes. The older Becket quirks a single brow at him, then calls over his shoulder, “Nah, Herc, it’s fine. Let the kid share in the awe a little, right? Not like this is an everyday thing, and you only get to be young once.”

There’s a pause during which Raleigh hears Scott murmur something to his brother, and then the older Australian makes a grunting noise of assent that sounds like it’s moving closer.

A hand lands on Raleigh’s shoulder, and he turns back to find that Bruce and Trevin are there, on his left, holding hands as Trevin extends a palm to rub at the younger Becket’s shoulder. He whips his head around when he feels Yancy stiffen slightly, and sees that Herc and Scott have come up behind Yancy, although Herc’s arm is on Chuck’s shoulder, his chest a few inches from Yancy’s back. Raleigh reaches out and grasps Yancy’s left hand in his right, squeezing slightly, and the tension drains from his brother’s body.

They all stand there like that, floodlights illuminating Gipsy’s conn pod, joined together against the monsters that want to destroy their families—destroy their world—in the cool, reflected blue light. And, in that moment, Raleigh no longer feels like he’s flying. He no longer feels like he’s hurtling through the air, riding the currents only to fall before he inevitably slams into the ground below.

No, in this moment, together with his friends, his new family, and his brother—the love of his life—Raleigh is _soaring_.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [... And Yancy Snores!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1996707) by [Rattlesnake_Smile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rattlesnake_Smile/pseuds/Rattlesnake_Smile)




End file.
